Conϐlict Studies Quarterly

Issue 14, January 2016

Board Senior Editor: Christian-Radu CHEREJI Associate Editors: Ioana Irina URS Editorial Board: Ioan HOSU, Virgiliu ŢÂRĂU, Ciprian TRIPON, Adrian POP, Ciprian SANDU

ISSN 2285-7605 ISSN-L 2285-7605 Accent Publisher, 2016 Contents

Mohamed HAJI INGIRIIS Somalia and Rwanda: The Psychology and Philosophy of the African Conflicts ...... 3 Suman DEVI Niharranjan MISHRA India: Conflict over Natural Resources. A Study on Jharbadhali Micro Watershed in Odisha ...... 35 Charles WRATTO Liberia: Cross-Cultural Healing for Former Child Soldiers ...... 49 Ignatius KABALE MUKUNTO Zambia: Mediation and the Transformation of the Lunda-Luvale Conflict ...... 61 John D. BREWER David MITCHELL Gerard LEAVEY Northern Ireland: Religion and Transitional Justice ...... 74 Otoabasi AKPAN Ubong Essien UMOH Nigeria: State Capacity and Insurgency in the Niger Delta since the 1990s ...... 92 Issue 14, January 2016

Somalia and Rwanda: The Psychology and Philosophy of the African Conϐlicts

Mohamed HAJI INGIRIIS

Abstract. Specialists on African conϔlicts are torn between fascination, frustration and factional- ism. Factionalised and ϔictionalised narratives in post-conϔlict communities in traumatic settings are often presented not through reϔlexive rationality but through defeatist war logic. Focusing on an account of Somali uncivil war in 1991, I challenge the recent propagation of the claim of ‘clan cleansing’ in Somalia and thus present a critical reassessment of the complex dynamics of the past Somali conϔlicts. An engaging academic re-examination is important, considering the controversies often created by post-conϔlict claims. By putting clan conϔlicts into anthropological and historical perspective, I argue that the claim of clan cleansing has no ethnographical authori- sation and historical validity in Somali history. Drawing on longitudinal ethnographic observation and personal experience as a witness of Somali uncivil war and working as a writer in Mogadishu during the height of the Somali conϔlicts, backed by theoretical, conceptual and comparative and empirical critical analysis on scholarship across humanities and social sciences, I problematize the paradoxes of the claim, propagated through public commentaries in Somali websites and by certain commentators in academia. Keywords: African Conϔlicts, Somali Uncivil Wars, Post-conϔlict Narratives.

Introduction On the evening of 28 January 2013, at Holiday Inn Hotel in Toronto, Canada, doz- ens of (expatriate) Somali Somalis, Somali Ethiopians and Somali Kenyans gathered for Mohamed HAJI INGIRIIS a clan convention they titled the “inaugural University of Oxford commemoration of the 1991 Clan Cleansing E-mail: [email protected] in Somalia.”1 The mobilisers of the confer- Conlict Studies Quarterly ence – many of them were the beneiciaries of the deposed regime of General Mohamed Issue 14, January 2016, pp. 3-34 Siad Barre by virtue of their direct association – had been stirred by the recent work of

3 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly revisionism, Clan Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991, by Lidwien Kapteijns (2013a), a Dutch author, who has attempted to academise this claim in a more authentic way, as the term was previously inserted into the public discourse in a less clear fashion and unsophisticated manner.2 Intended to augment the claim while overlooking the complex narratives of the clan conlicts, the account is illed with accusatory allegations and vocabulary of hatred and hostilities. The primary source base stems from one certain clan-group expatriates in the United States and Canada who have permeated the pejorative term “clan cleansing” over the years to describe the defeat of the dictator and his leeing from the capital city of Mogadishu (Ingiriis, 2013b, pp. 112-114). Thus, the account offers a site unto itself upon which informants could draw discursive claims in which they could arrest rivals. Armed with the claim of clan cleansing – concerned as it is with advocating for the return of a lost clan pride – informants seem to join the clanised wars to advocate for the return of one particular sub-clan hegemony by discursively arresting certain politicians and personalities. Such attempts continue to feed into clanised wars after clanised wars. The gist of the clan cleansing – in spite of kindling the clan conlicts – was to demand a political position within the State spoils for new politico-war entrepreneurs. Between 30 December 1990 and 26 January 1991, clan militias – on one hand represented by the United Somali Congress (USC) led by General Mohamed Farah Aideed, on the other by General Mohamed Siad Barre with the backing of the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF) – fought each other for defending and for destroying the military regime in Somalia. Eventually, the latter was defeated in a four-week battle that raged most of the Somali capital Mogadishu (Ingiriis, 2013b). Fractionalized and ictionalised narratives in post-conlict communities in traumatic settings are more often than not dictated by the defeatist war logic: “I want to revenge and expect vengeance after vengeance.” The perpetual armed conlicts in Somalia(s) have not only produced a mini-states based on clan exclusivity, but it has also given rise to new clan victimhood discourse inspired by the conlicting narratives of various clans and communities. Imag(in)ing impartiality and impinging on objectivity appear to be dificult in this context, as rivals criminalise each other. However, some were able to subsume their narrative under the catchphrase of “clan cleansing” in a catch-all cliché fashion aimed at (re)coniguration of Somali politics. As in Rwanda, the claim of clan cleansing is a “political tactic aimed at partially exonerating the former regime and shifting the burden of guilt to the new one” (Prunier, 1995, p. 357). Writing in 2006, Menkhaus (2006/07, p. 94) has predicted that “in the short term, external support for state building will almost never be a neutral exercise, but will instead entail taking sides in internal Somali disputes.” The State-building is now turned into clan-building, more or less what Menkhaus predicted as “clan homelands” or “clanustans’ (ibid., p. 83). Many efforts have been made time and again over whether non-Somali analysts could be used to speak for “us” against “the other”. Needless to say that most of these attempts

4 Issue 14, January 2016 have so far ended in failure. The scholarly production from certain observers – though impressive – is less objective history than what Shokpeka (2005, pp. 485-491) calls “applied history” – which is to say, a history founded on traditional clan-based myths. In The Savage Mind, the French anthropologist Lévi-Strauss has noted that “history is never history, but history-for” (1966, p. 254). Put simply, the “for” is obvious in the Somali Studies. Apparently satisied to uncritically accept any tales that clan conscious informants fed into her, Kapteijns’s recent book (2013a) on the Somali conlicts is undoubtedly written for one particular clan-group, as long as the pen was exercised in the Somali repertoire (as elsewhere in Africa) as a weapon to support certain clans and arrest their rival opponents (Ingiriis, 2013b, 2013c). According to S. Samatar (2013), each Somali clan-group has now its own advocates in Somali Studies and, incredibly, he points his inger at Kapteijns (2013a) and some other Western commentators who publicly sided with one clan against the other.3 This is not something of which most analysts in Somali Studies are unaware. Indeed, some have tended to admit their align- ment, wittingly or unwittingly. Kapteijns presents a biassed narrative of how certain clan politicians and populace viewed and formulated on what happened in 1991, explaining and insisting through such voices that what occurred was clan cleansing. Besteman has pointed out to “the biases and assumptions” of anthropologists and other academics “in constructing a representation of violence in Somalia” (1996b, p. 120), not to mention their lack of deep thoughts and typologies. Indeed, the only narrative Kapteijns gives here stems from her adopted clan. But the problematic aspect of such narrative is the ordered exploration of who they are from who they were. Deining clan cleansing in a very broad terms, the past is positioned into the place of present with politics writ large. On the front cover of Kapteijns’s book (2013a) on the 1991 clanised wars over pride, prestige and power, the sub-title is “the ruinous legacy of 1991”. This is where the partisanship and partiality begins in the preparation of upcoming parliamentary election scheduled to be held in 2016. Contrary to the claims that the 1991 armed conlicts were a new phenomenon in Somali society, killings were for Somalis “tearless” and “grieless” even in the the pre-colonial period (Hanley, 2004, p. 81). Not only should the 1990s Somali clanised wars be understood as a continual of prearranged project set for Somalia by the ousted regime, so too contemporary continuation of the conlicts. The ruins of the capital, which is to this day invisible to observers who visit the capital, would have attested to the fact that clan cataclysms were random. The continuation of the armed conlicts in Somalia has produced a new academic discourse through categories and catalogues that helped the competing armed clan-groups dehumanise each other. Somali Studies, in and of itself, as a subject and as a sub-ield in African Studies has become a spatial arena very prone to this guinea pig war tests where spins masquerading as “scholars” exercise their spins here and there. Upon the publication of Katepijns (2013a), the disputes of the Somali conlicts were shifted from

5 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly oral discourse to academic claim as the debate over who lost what, why and where in 1991 and over who won, what, why and where has become a politicised project.4 This is not because one cannot understand the complexities of Somali conlicts, but when one fails to be natural in the analysis of the conlict, the real sight and insight were lost. Failure to discussing the sociology and philosophy of armed clan conlicts leads to misunderstanding. Two purposes deine the claim of clan cleansing. First is to make what Prunier (1995) calls the “artiicial past of the present” to compete a contemporary contestation over power. Second, and by far the most detrimental, is to distort “the present by projecting it into the past” (p. 38). Of a precisely better example is how Kapteijns’s (2013a) account dehumanises a certain clan-group at a particular moment of the 1991 cataclysm. Can the caricatured claim of clan cleansing be then applicable to the Somali context? To whom people can be applied to the term “cleansing”? People killed for political or clan reasons? The ordinary donkey cartman called Taliye, a Bantu/ Jareer from the Reer Shabelle on the banks of Qallaafe in the Somali territory in Ethiopia, who was appallingly killed in a trivial dispute with an armed men in Mogadishu in 1998, might have wondered whether there was one single legacy in the 1990s.5 If he were alive today, he might have asked: Was 1998 less ruinous than 1991? Employing critical theories of conlict studies and adding a pint of salt to the post-conlict claims of Somalia while empirically and theoretically conceptualising, comparing and contrasting with the Rwandan case, I challenge the claim of clan cleansing and offer a nuanced account of the complex dynamics of the past Somali conlicts. This is not to deny the clanised wars following Siad Barre’s ouster, but to illuminate that these atrocities were less devastating than what Somali society as a whole has been going through before and after 1991 (Africa Watch, 1990; Ahmed, 1995, 1996, 2001; Brons, 2001; Besteman, 1996a, 1999; Ingiriis, 2012a, 2012b; Simons, 1994, 1995). Drawing on longitudinal ethnographic observation and personal experience as a witness of the Somali uncivil wars and working as a writer in Mogadishu during the height of the clan wars, backed by theoretical, conceptual and empirical critical analysis scholarship across humanities and social sciences, I problematize the paradoxes of the claim, propagated through public commentaries in Somali websites and by certain commentators in academia. Direct knowledge and past experiences of the events under discussion by the scholar himself or herself provide a bonus for constructing a balanced and productive scholarship. Understanding the Somali conlicts warrants a nuanced ethnographic explanation of the unusual “webs of violence” (Fujii, 2009) as well as the ‘local determinants’ (Halvard and Rød, 2006). As Boddy (1997) reminds: “[T]here must be scope for anthropologists to reach beyond the academy, engage with current issues, challenge common but uninformed social stereotypes in responsible yet accessible ways” (p. 6). Debunking the conjecture of “cleansing” reveals how the clan claims upon which the notion is based fails to consider that clanised wars have a history, one that is repressed in current debates.

6 Issue 14, January 2016

Commonalities: Somali Studies and Rwandese Studies Specialists on African conlicts are torn between fascination, frustration and faction- alism. Specialists often study on societies in their studies, but rarely is there a study studying the specialists themselves. Generations-long clan hatreds and counter-hatreds in African societies have begun to spread in African Studies. How war-torn societies affect scholarship is a matter that warrants psychological and psychopathic investigation. Examining this phenomenon helps to critically inquire over whether clan cleansing as a concept can be applied to the Somali clan conlicts, a historical reality since time immemorial, which leads us to ask for multi-disciplinary Braudelian historical exploration, one that is informed by various sides of the debate other than a narrow analysis. There is a rare academic engagement of Somalists and when they do, the engagement takes the form of academic pugilism. This leads one to conclude that specialists on Somalia either love or loathe each other. Does the war affect unknowingly or unwittingly? No doubt that many years of working in conlict-ridden zones have to endure psychological impacts on them. Without knowing, a post-traumatic distress simmered into their way of thinking in African conlicts.6 Depending on one’s point of view, each gets as pro-Hutu or as pro-Tutsi. A work of scholarship – a Hotel Rwanda-style – joining the conlict is not a matter restricted to the Somali case and not even unique to the study of polarised societies. In Rwandese Studies, for example, the specialists after post-genocide began to sympathise either with the Tutsi or the Hutu. While Prunier (1995) celebrates the Tutsi capture of power after the fall of the Juvénal Habyarimana regime, Mamdani (2001) seems to support the position of the Hutu power. Indeed, both scholars noted (unwittingly?) that each specialist sided with one side over the other (cf. Mamdani, 2001, p. 133; Prunier, 1995, p. 157, 357).7 Prunier (1995, p. 357) makes a second note of this point. Apparently to exonerate himself from such a Tutsi label, he revised his book and added a new chapter (chapter 10). This was probably because, upon a scathing criticism of the book, he, at last, came to terms with reconciling his objectivity, trying to balance his treatment of both groups. Within three years later, Prunier (2009) crossed the loor to the Hutu “moderates” opposing the Tutsi-dominated Kigali regime. But he went as far as arranging crucial foreign contacts for his Hutu politicians. Prunier also seems to hint that Paul Kagame was behind the mysterious murder of Fred Rwigyema, a Hutu and original leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), only to pave the way for his usurpation of power. As Mamdani complained with exhaustion: “In the inlamed atmosphere of postgenocide Rwanda studies, even the tiny coterie of Rwanda specialists among Western academics – mostly Belgian, French, and North American – has not escaped this litmus test. Deriving their sources from either the RPF or the former regime élites, authors in post-genocide Rwanda had aligned themselves with the guiders on the ground or fab- ricators in the ield. Whereas most of the newcomers are pro-Tutsi, most of the old

7 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly academics are pro-Hutu, a phenomenon that could be attributed how power has con- igured knowledge in Africa in the strict Foucauldian sense. To call Timothy Garton Ash: “Political perception, like treason, is a matter of date. If you want to judge anything written by a foreigner about a country, you need to know when the writer irst went there. Was it in the bad old days? Or perhaps for him they were the good old days? Was it before the revolution, war, coup, occupation, liberation or whatever the local caesura is? Of course, the writer’s own previous background and current politics are important too. But so often the irst encounter is formative. Emotionally and implicitly, if not intel- lectually and explicitly, it remains the standard by which all subsequent developments are judged” (cited in Prunier, 2009, p. 357). Prunier (ibid., p. 358) himself provides very candid review of himself as moving from being a Tutsi friend to a Hutu friend. He also reports that his colleague Lieve Joris has admitted to him that she dislikes the Tutsi, because she irst met and socialised with the Hutu. In Somalia, Kapteijns’s irst and last visit to the country was 1989, when the Siad Barre regime was conducting a campaign of clanocide (annihilation) against the Isaaq clan-group in the North (today’s Somaliland), a story about which she has not discussed. The example of Rwanda was a case unknown in the Somali Studies until the publication of Kapteijns’ Clan Cleansing (2013a), even though literature produced and published by non-Somalis since post-colonial gouvernementalité (governmentality) has one common trait: eulogising particular clan at the expense of others (Bahadur, 2011; Lewis, 1961, 1992, 2002, 2003, 2008; Le Sage, 2002).8 Lewis (2008) has expressed his views in stri- dently supporting Somaliland secession from Somalia, which non-Isaaq Somalilanders tend to shift from a campaign of rejection to a campaign of ejection. Almost all non-So- malis writing about Somaliland followed in the footsteps of Lewis, some going as far as to suggest that Hargeysa has to contemplate on drawing lessons from the violent option for secession of Eritrea, Kosovo and South Sudan, which is to say – taking up arms is the only route open to obtaining international recognition and thus seceding from Somalia (on such an odd argument, see Pijovic, 2014; Routhke, 2011). Ahmed (1995) arrives at the most incisive observation on these dynamics from the literary analysis, when he observed that: … scholars on Somalia based their writings on information gathered from politically conscious informers. Of course, a scholar’s own analysis of the data remo[u]lds the information made available to him/her by informers. However, we must remember that such information at the disposal of the scholar is not impartial. The absence of impartiality, in and of itself, is no fault of the scholar’s. After all, different informers give out different pieces of information. A scholar’s writing, however, becomes counterproductive, I believe, if he/she becomes complacent with a single version of any reported event. Such complacency could become a travesty of scholarship when other scholars only glean information from past texts (p. x).

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The partial and biassed analyses – this, after all, was war-torn Somalia – pointed out by Ahmed have partially contributed to the continuation of the Somali conlicts. Those who run after their political or economic attachments – those who have one foot in one side of the pavement and the other in the other pavement in 1991 – end up at the end of the day to come up with a work intensely prejudiced to a particular clan. In Somalia, as in Rwanda, it often proves easy to pull Westerners into the “matrix of clan rivalry” (Besteman, 1996b, p. 122). Many is a non-Somali author feeling no shame (perhaps lack of cultural nuance) to represent the interests of a particular clan-group. Most recently, some have begun to publicly proclaim their favour of one clan to the detriment of another.9 Like Colette Braeckman, who unashamedly supported the Habyarimana regime in Rwanda due to earlier economic afiliation (Braeckman, 1994), Kapteijns’s (2013a, 2013b) was less a description of cleansing than an attempt to invent one.10 This was also the case with Siad Barre’s era. Only following his ouster did analysts who had previously supported him begin to curse him (e.g. Lewis, 2004, 2008). The cumulative consequences of what happened in 1991 had elsewhere been interpreted such that Kapteijns wrote that the “state and social order themselves collapsed in communal (clan-based) violence that took many Somalis completely by surprise” (Kapteijns, 2009, p. 102). If the violence – in Kapteijns’s own interpretation in 2009 – was “communal” and “clan-based” violence, why the clan cleansing argument in 2013? Where is the role of all the other clans and sub-clans who were blamed for involvement in such a mutual communal violence? What is the concentration of one clan-group out of all others? If the clan wars of 1991 between the Hawiye and the Daarood amounts to clan cleansing, what about the “Hargeysa Holocaust”, where more than 50,000 people had been exterminated by the Siad Barre regime-sponsored Daarood army backed up by the Hawiye levies (Africa Watch, 1990)? The 1959 purge of Tutsi from Rwanda to Uganda? The 1972 elimination in Burundi of educated Hutus? The Red Terror massacres in Ethiopia under Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1974-1991? The mass murders in Uganda under the Obote II regime in the mid-1980s? The list goes on and on. Even if one accepts the clan cleansing hypothesis against particular clan, what about the other clan cleansing(s) against the Hawiye, the Isaaq, the Rahanweyn (Reewing) and other unarmed Somali communities (the so-called minorities), such as the Banaadiri, the Bantu, the Bravenese, basically all other clans and communities? This was of no interest so it was disregarded in Kapteijns (2013). However, the answers should be located somewhere midway between (or beyond) oppression, heavy-handedness and political alienation under the clano-military regime.

Clan Cleansing à la Rwanda Drawing on social science scholarship under the rubric of genocide studies, as adopted by revisionists, and relying on insights and opinions offered by the French political scientist Compagnon (1995), Kapteijns’s approach (2013a, 2013b) to the 1990s clanised

9 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly wars are assumptive rather than analytical prescriptive proximate or deeper, since the causes of the wars were not systematically studied. If one expects to locate answers for sombre questions such as why Somalia fell into the imaginative clan cleansing, one will be disappointed.11 This is not merely because the term “cleansing” can hardly be applicable to the Somali clan world in a nuanced, contextual meaning, but its usage is problematic in a context where one of the warring sides was considered as a fellow ethnic rather than an “alien”. In the Somali world, there was no such an ontological feature compartmentalising clans into tribal lines, let alone ethnic lines. For example, the Hawiye militias believed that the Daarood militias were rivals – more or less com- petitors, whereas the Hutu in Rwanda held that the Tutsi were “aliens” who came from Ethiopia (Mamdani, 2001; Pottier, 2002; Prunier, 1995). Besteman (1998) explains that “what happened in the early 1990s was an unprecedented cataclysm of violence that affected all corners of the country and all social groups” (p. 111). The notion of clear them out as was in Rwanda would not even capture in the clanised wars, even if one could compare with what happened as ϔlushism – a metaphor for the unconventional mode of warfare – rather than cleansism as there was no one to be cleansed (or cleaned) from the Somali territories. This is not merely because the clan cleansing was imported from outside, but there was no Somali term for cleansing. Yet, in the clan cleansing claim, the Hawiye is perceived and painted as Hutu, the Daarood being put into the position of the Tutsi – victims, that is. True, the hostility between the Hawiye and Daarood was akin to the Hutu and Tutsi, but nothing comparable to the latter’s beyond-the-pale barbarity happened in Somalia.12 In Rwanda, husbands killed wives based on ethnic identity. Such horriic acts had not been witnessed in Somalia, though cases of husbands divorcing wives due to clan vendettas were rife during the 1990s. In short, nothing that resembled cleansing happened in Somalia, notably in Mogadishu during the height of the 1990s wars. It indeed occurred in Rwanda where Kapteijns (2013a) came to rely on secondary anthropological work in constructing her assumptions on Somalia.13 The reality remains that the conlict in Somalia was not a clear-cut affair; it has a long litany of multifarious political actors with multifarious agendas. Bakonyi (2009) has noted that, when conlicts are reduced to cultural claims, “they tend to be total, as they not only simplify the identiication of friend and foe within a given taxonomy, but also force every person to locate herself/himself within this taxonomy” (p. 450). Employing a Bosnian-style deinition of genocide and selective use of unnamed sources that conforms to her imaginaire, Kapteijns let loose of invoking the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. Referring also to Rwanda, in order to make her case of the Somali context more compelling, she equates – in a sweeping judgement and a completely discrete context – the 1991 Somali clan convulsions with the 1994 Rwandan genocide, even with the 1995 Yugoslavia. She does so by shuttling from one embattled politician to another to prove her point. The conceptual framework frequently used to

10 Issue 14, January 2016 make sense of the case is the Foucauldian concept of the ‘key shift’ (e.g. Foucault, 1972), a term problematically adopted. However, the concept of the key shift was irst applied to African Studies by Mamdani (2001, p. 142), who made a standard contribution to the Rwandan genocide. Indeed, what had been witnessed in Rwanda – or even close – had hardly happened in Somalia, but Kapteijns (2013a) maintains to partner the Somali case with the Rwandese one. She does justice neither to the subject matter, nor to the distinctive socio-political factors of both cases. Mimicking Mamdani’s, Kapteijns (2013a) seems to scruple applying his signiicant concepts on ethnic conlict to the Somali case. That she perceives this, not as an invention, but innovation is an indication of her failure to contextualise the complexity of the Somali clanised wars. The dangers in comparing the genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda to the clan convulsions in 1991 Somalia are all too obvious to explain. In When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda, Mamdani (2001) carried out investigative, eyewitness research ieldwork in Rwanda, interviewing both victims and victors for his standard study. Contrastingly, Kapteijns (2013a) did not carry out ieldwork research in any part of Somalia, let alone Mogadishu, the epicentre of her historical drama. Unlike what she asserts and insists, she has not travelled to Somalia (even empirically or con- ceptually) to construct convincing theoretical case (Ingiriis, 2013b, pp. 112-114). Not visiting the sites of the ighting (perhaps because she had already afiliated herself with particular clan-group) led her to re-emphasise the gossip and clan-hate narratives that one clan-group held against another. Writing on speciic incidents out of news reports, she berates reporters on the ield on why they failed to report about the clan cleansing, a cleansing they had never seen. Not even what had happened during the 1990s in Sierra Leone (Richards, 1996) or Liberia (Brehun, 1991), what happened in 1990s Somalia and the Somali case was not as organised along systematic lines as them. Here, the USC was not a coherent organisation like the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone or National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) in Liberia. In Somalia, in contrast to elsewhere in African conlicts, what occurred in 1991 was a “political slaughter”. Considering the role of ethnicity and clan in those wars, Mamdani (2001) found in Rwanda that ethnic massacres do not necessarily lead to ‘genocides’. For example, “genocide” was something that – as Prunier (1995, p. 141) aptly pointed out – “would have been almost impossible to do in Somalia” in the 1990s Somalia. This was because boody as it was, the Somali conlict remained a war, where civilians died as secondary casualties. Somali culture is not nicer than Rwandese culture, it is simply too individualistic to enable such systematic slaughter to be organised among civilians. One more note of caution for commentators who glibly talk about ‘Africa’ as if it were a coherent whole (ibid.). The most peculiar of this positions was not the clan cleansing claim in and of itself, but the implicit argument that the Hawiye and the Daarood are two different ethnic

11 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly groups, a proposition unwittingly paves the way for more massacres. Prior to using clan cleansing term, Kapteijns (2001b, p. 684; 2002, p. 56) had adopted a decade ago the term “ethnocide”, a somewhat similar to genocide, but differs from when it was carried out to massacre a community or whole clan because of ethnicity. The invocation of “ethnic” appears to imply as though the Hawiye and the Daarood – whose name were used by the departing dictatorial regime to pit one clan-group against the other for survival – were two different ethnic Somali groups, so much so they could be compared to the Hutu and the Tutsi in Rwanda.14 Such a Rwandan-style invocation into Somali Studies is misleading at best and fabricated at worst. In Rwanda, Mamdani (2001) shows that colonialism had framed both the Hutu and the Tutsi in two different races, a strategy later retained by the post-colonial Rwandese State leaders. Similar to such a divide-and-rule classic rule, some sought to divide the Hawiye and the Daarood into two different ethnic groups similar to the Amhara and Orromo in Ethiopia or Kikuyu and Kalenjin in Kenya.

Putting the Rwandan Crisis into a Context Africa is a peculiar place of puzzles. Twenty years have elapsed since the Rwandan genocide and the great gouvernementalité (governmentality) in South Africa. While, for example, 1994 Rwanda was going through one of the most barbaric moments in its history, 1994 South Africa was experiencing one of the best moments in its history. How could one mediate with the twin incidents, which still remains a riddle to both pundits and politicians in Africa and elsewhere? This is not a place to compare and contrast with the two 1994 paradoxes – that is, the miracle in South Africa and the misfortune in Rwanda. Rather, it is about revisiting the Rwandan conlict by linking the past into the present and present into the past. The conlict of Rwanda can hardly be compared to any other in Africa. Anyone who was familiar with the Rwandan long durée history à la Braudel would have anticipated and expected that, given the structure of the post-colonial State façade, the country would be prone to ethnic upheaval, but never genocide, since both the main two ethnic groups, the Tutsi and the Hutu, had lived peacefully side by side over centuries. Considering the current political reality in Rwanda, the aim of this section is to draw attention to the fact that the roots of the tree that led to genocide still constitute a challenge to the sustainable peace and development in Rwanda. It is now an opportune time – as twenty years has elapsed since the genocide – to rethink what went wrong in Rwanda. Reconceptualising and redeining Rwandan conlict – rather than accepting or swallowing how the local élites framed the genocide – entails a careful reconsideration of local political dynamics dominated by political ethnicity.15 Scholarship after scholarship and literature after literature carried constant claims that the Hutu – assumed as a homogeneous group – nearly exterminated the Tutsi. Even though Hutu civilians were used as auxiliaries in the genocide campaign, the Hutuness was a political tool and title employed by the genocide regime, whereas the Tutsiness

12 Issue 14, January 2016 was a political platform used by the RPF to ascent to power. Did the Hutu killed the Tutsi as Tutsi, or vice versa? The most important point – which is absent in the genocide literature on Rwanda – is that, when the Hutu civilians were killing their fellow Tutsi, they were not killing Tutsis as a Tutsi. Rather, they were killing the RPF.16 From the mind of the Hutu génocidaires, they were killing not the Tutsi, but the Inyenzi (the derogatory term they labelled for the RPF which means the “cockroaches”). The term was not only used to describe the RPF but all their supporters regardless Tutsi or Hutu; most of the wrath affected the former. Who were the RPF? To the minds of génocidaires, the RPF was Tutsi refugees from Uganda attempting at reinstating an authoritarian rule of a colonial kind. For the RPF rank-and-ile were held to be the former Tutsi refugees returning to set the earlier scores in the same way as the genocidal State unleashed brutal crackdowns upon them. Somehow, fear for RPF reprisals aggravated the genocide. The Hutu “often killed Hutu just to get even with those they perceived as globally responsible for the death of their families” (Prunier, 1995, p. 322). The RPF, on the other hand, were not ighting for the Tutsi, as it made clear right from the beginning. They were simply after seizing the whole state so as to grab the resources. The Hutu and the Tutsi, as traditional social identities, were racialized, irst by the Belgian colonial State and later retained such racialization by none other than post-colonial Rwandan State. While refuting the colonial and post-colonial policies of treating the Hutu and the Tutsi as two different races, many scholars have come at last to treat them as such by considering the Tutsi an alien outside race. Considering the Tutsi and the Hutu as a “corporate groups contending for political power” and thus refusing to regard them as different races, Mamdani (2001) inally compares the Tutsi to white South Africans or Indians in Uganda. This meant that the Tutsi were a different race than their Hutu brethren. In Rwanda, as in Somalia, this compartmentalisation had created animosity between the Tutsi and the Hutu.17 Thus, the social bomb was deliberately fostered well before 1994 (on a congruent context in Somalia, see Castagno, 1964). After the post-colony, the political lexicon of condemning colonialism was turned to those who took over power. One crucial fact was that the socially accepted standard rhetoric was directed at this time not at the Belgian colonialists, but at the Tutsi élites who constituted the gatekeepers – or up above in the ladder – in the hierarchical colonial power. The transformation of the Tutsi – the colonial authorities described them the “Europeans under a black skin” – saw seeds of hatred due to economic and political beneits ac- crued from the colonial connection. Oral tradition gathered by early ethnographers and ethnohistorians are replete with patron-client relationship between the Tutsi and the Hutu asserted in the ubuhake system, a system of subordination segregating those who were less economically suficient from those who were successful (Lemarchand, 2011). The consequence was irreconcilable tensions over socio-economic lifestyles and ‘racial’ compartmentalisations between the Hutu and the Tutsi as not only two different ethnicities, but also races. The functionality of the concept of ‘dual colonialism’ – Belgian

13 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly colonialists on the one hand and the Tutsi colonialists on the other – was materialised. The debates over the role played by the ethnic cleavages in the genocide remain alive in everyday oral and academic discourses on Rwanda. A recent BBC documentary, which radically reviewed the genocide in 1994, has added fuel to the deep sentiments among the Rwandan Diaspora and created uproar back home (BBC Two, 2014). Apart from the controversy underpinning here and there, the documentary exposed for the irst time the politics behind using the genocide as a political resource on the part of the RPF government. By sparking an intense dispute over who had committed the genocide and against whom was committed, the documentary has pursued a controversial line of revisionist argument that the Tutsi civilians murdered in the genocide were less numerous than their Hutu fellows, while the overall death toll was less than the number which had previously been pervaded. Released in a time when the Rwandan society is trying to overcome the traumatic distress of the genocide, the documentary opened up new wounds. Even if there was an element of exaggeration in the BBC documentary, it cannot be altogether wrong to argue that the Tutsi and the Hutu are victims of the same genocidal campaign. It is also reasonable when the Kigali government counteracted recent revisionisms on the post-genocide Rwanda, because such attempts continue to pose a challenge to (re)creating a cohesive community living in peace and harmony with each other. The political agenda of the Kigali government does not only quell dissenting voices, but it also suppresses any critical scholarship that does not sit well with their aims. That the government banned Alison Des Forges from the country, the only specialist who warned of the possible genocide in 1994, shortly before her death, was one such untenable act. In any case, denying Des Forges entry into Rwanda was too far for the Kigali government. The notable Rwandan specialist Filip Reyntjens was also declared persona non grata in 1995 and he has not been able to visit the country ever since (e.g. Reyntjens, 2012). These political reactions relect the lack of ‘collective memory’ (Berry and Berry, 1999) in the aftermath of the post-conlict settings to properly heal both victims and victors. Suppression against specialists undoubtedly gives a wrong impression on the Rwandan government among many analysts who would have been sympathetic to a country grappling to come to terms with the legacies of one of the most horrible genocides in the world history. The authoritarian actions of the government would lead to incomplete democracy or lack thereof. As a result, one legitimately inquires whether democracy was nurtured in Rwanda or, rather, a “danger zone” was constructed (Verhoeven, 2012).

Comparing and Contextualising Conϐlicts The power expansion projects and plans, pursued partially by a small group of power- brokers closer to the Kigali government, became counterproductive and have further contributed to new ways in which ethnicity was asserted and re-asserted through sub-

14 Issue 14, January 2016 tle ways. Given the escalation of polarised political spaces, a sense of victimhood still persists in the Tutsi and the Hutu camps, a sign that the genocide that aflicted the Rwandan society in the recent past would unnecessarily incorporate into the present political debates. As Prunier (1995) observed: “In Rwanda and in Burundi, history, the world, politics, are now increasingly seen through the prisms of Tutsi or Hutu partisan visions” (p. 387). For Rwanda, as for Somalia, there is a lack of trust between the victims and the victors of the catastrophes. What is-aaminaad is to the Somalis is igihango to the Rwandese (both terms donate ‘trust’). Both the Tutsi and the Hutu élites accuse each other of the genocide, even though the evidence shows that it was a small group of Hutu élites in the Habyarimana inner circle who had incited the Hutu civilians in massacring their fellow Tutsi brethren in the aftermath of the President assassination in April 1994. Reconsidering what had happened reveals that the genocide was the “last-ditch attempt at survival” (Hintjens, 1999) by the remnants of the Habryarimana regime who gone mad upon hearing the horrible news that the President’s aircraft was shot down. This does not imply that the genocide was not pre-planned, but it means the aeroplane shooting served the momentum of justiication for the attempt to wipe out the RPF and its supporters. However, the Rwanda genocide was a state project whether it was pre-planned or planned on the eve of the assassination. As the widowed state authorities organised and ordered the civilians to act swiftly to avenge the death of the president, ethnicity was used both as an ideology and an instrument. Propaganda was pervaded all over Kigali and elsewhere that the RPF bent on seizing power was the culprit behind the aeroplane shooting. Even though there were many other orchestrators, the main instigators of the genocide in Rwanda were none other than Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, General Augustin Bizimungu, Jean Kambanda, Frodwald Karamira, Colonel Protais Mpiranya and many other of their colleagues. Many external (both neighbours and distant) strong stakeholders were also politically and militarily involved in Rwandan genocide which made the whole thing more complex and complicated. While the Americans, the British and the French were competing, “the Museveni government exported Uganda’s internal crisis to Rwanda” (Mamdani, 2001; Prunier, 1995; Reyntjens, 2009). Most notable of these external support went to the RPF. Mamdani (2001) acknowledges that “it is not possible to deine the scope – and not just the limits – of action without taking into account historical legacies” (p. 9). The tendency to trace the Rwandan genocide through inner eyes without considering the outside agencies is akin to depriving the genocide chronicle one crucial and critical – if not the most signiicant – historical background.

Reclaiming the Rwandan Reality: The Open-ended Ethnicity Ethnicity still is a potent force and powerful caption in Rwanda. The unrepentance positions over the years of the civilians – the so-called génocidaires – who actually carried out the genocide is a testament that the hatred that led to the genocide appears to be

15 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly visible and vigorous. The génocidaires are alive and still capable of committing it again (Kiwuwa, 2012; Reyntjens, 2012). Whether the current government of the RPF continues to suppress them or opens to a new space(s) they could be reintegrated into the society hinges upon policies pursued for the contemporary conlict resolution by the current government. For there is no any other alternative to the conundrum other than the government to allow them to be part of the peaceful post-genocide Rwandan society, the choices are very few and far few in that matter. Where the Rwandan government rejects the reintegration of politicians and soldiers who served in the Habyarimana regime, in Somalia, the Siad Barre regime remnants are conceived of as technocrats – that is, the only people who know how to run a government (Ingiriis, 2012a).18 The power and potency of the ethnicity in contemporary Rwanda are illustrative of the attempt by the Kigali government at suppressing it by the legal prohibition of the terms such as the Tutsi, the Hutu and the Twa. It is without saying that such de-ethnicization (or de-clanisation) attempts hardly work in Africa, given the Siad Barre’s Somalia, where such attempts had been carried out in 1971 soon after the accession to power of the military regime in 1969. However, the Somali case could be seen somewhat different, for Siad Barre himself was a real beneiciary of the clan system in order to maintain his rule, which was on the Mareehaan-Ogaadeen-Dhulbahante (MODH) clan coalition (Adam, 2008; Aroma, 2005a, 2005b). The Paul Kagame regime also possesses no lesser purpose than Siad Barre’s. As soon as it ascended to power, the RPF itself made the Hutuness a crime, or as Prunier (1995) put it, “a Damoclean sword over every Hutu’s head” because “any Hutu is either a real or potential murderer” in the eyes of the new government and “can go to jail at any time”. The RPF at the same time denies the existence of ethnic – even racial – differentiation between the Tutsi and the Tutsi. Promoting the notion and the narrative of the “Tutsi genocide” – the claim that only the Tutsi was massacred – on the part of the Kigali government means that the genocide affair was one single ethnic project, not for all Rwandan one. From various ways, the government unintentionally upholds ethnicity: on one hand, it publicly bans, but fosters on the other. The fact that the amended version of the Rwandan Constitution mentions the Tutsi, but not the Hutu, speaks volumes how the current government attempts to capitalise for its own beneit on the Tutsised version of the genocide (Government of Rwanda, 2008). On the other hand, there is an invisible element of contradiction in the government position. Rather than recognising the conlict in which the genocide was conducted as one between Rwandan on Rwandan, the government regards it one between the Tutsi and the Hutu. As long as the genocide is a “Tutsi” genocide, President Kagame has a justiication to stay in power as does other authoritarian rulers in other parts of Africa. The question the rural Rwandan would pose to the generation of Western researchers should be: where are the “new breed of African leaders” imagined by the Clinton White House in 1994?

16 Issue 14, January 2016

Twenty years ago, Rwanda was an almost apocalyptic country where the existence of human life was near to vanish (Time, 1994; also Des Forges, 1999; Gourevitch, 1998; Omaar, 1995). Whereas some inside and external stakeholders washed their hands from the blood, some others took off the glove and encouraged their fellows to conduct the dirty work of the genocide. While the Rwandan Church was complicit in the genocide, it is scarcely surprising that its counterpart, the Muslim Mosque, was an eyewitness to the genocide. As observed by Mamdani (2001, p. 253), the only community that averted to implicate in the genocide was the Muslim community. Aside from the blamewor- thy and the bystander, the Rwandan tragedy resulted in the catastrophic human loss of epic proportions. As Prunier (1995) reported: “The physical aspect of the country was tragic, with buildings destroyed, standing houses thoroughly looted and heaps of corpses still lying around. In some villages, children could be seen playing with skulls as if they were balls” (p. 327). Somalia was not so different in terms of the huge social and economic devastation (e.g. Brunk, 2008). In August of 1992, a British journalist had to report from Golweyn (Somalia) with this horrible story: The orphans of Golweyn watched in silence as the boy was taken out of their smoke-blackened room. He had lain for six hours under a soiled sheet, among the motionless bodies of the living. Then they found he was dead. Nobody knew where he had come from, where his family was, what he was called. Three men gently carried him out, wrapped in the straw mat on which he had died. They cut off his stained clothes with a knife and laid him on the bare springs of a bedstead. Water ran across the ire-scarred loor as they washed the bones that were all that was left of the boy after his long starvation. He was wrapped in a white sheet, bound with strips of rag. For a few minutes, three old men prayed over the body. Then the boy was buried outside the camp among 1,200 unmarked graves dug in the past two months. As we walked to the cemetery the men carrying the body were told that they would have to dig graves for three more people who had died in the past hour (Huband, 1992).

Conceptualising Clan Cleansing Cleansings are measured or determined the lethal outcome and the ways in which the agents and the ones who are involved mediate a new meaning after the battleield. The war over state power between the two Hawiye leaders Ali Mahdi Mohamed and General Mohamed Farah Aideed – inaccurately depicted as the Abgaal and the Habar Gidir war – was longer and larger in time and in a number of victims than any other in 1991.19 It is worth noting that Ali Mahdi chaired in 2007 a reconciliation conference held in Mogadishu that each Somali clan apologised the other for what they did to each other in the name of the clan. So the similar way the Daarood elders apologised to the Hawiye, the Hawiye apologised to the Daarood. Yet, the clan cleansing claim as a political term rather than analytical or empirical term disregards other clanised wars

17 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly as nothing more than crossire, because the claim itself is used as a political resource rather than a historical fact. For instance, it is used in contemporary political scene to vilify a politician to exclude from the right of State power, a State which never existed in reality but existed in imagination. This is not a simple proposition, but would seem so for analysts so parochial to argue for a case of clan cleansing in clan conlicts. When is the claim invoked to assert that a particular clan conlict resulted in clan cleansing? The term clan cleansing had previously been used in several instances for speciic purposes to apply to Somalia (Augelli & Murphy, 1995; Prendergast, 1994b; Rogge, 1993). However, most of these usages referred to the catastrophe in Baydhabo famine of 1991-1993. Though not directly referenced, Kapteijns’s adoption of the term draws from Perlez (1992), who had – deriving from her certain clan interviewees – irst adopted what she called “clannic cleanings”. Likewise, in his revised fourth edition of his classic, A Modern History of the Somali, Lewis (2002, p. 263) used the term clan cleansing in a careful and conscious way by attributing its originality to the Siad Barre and his rush- hour SSDF supporters. However, the claim has been perpetuated sensu lato by politicians who lost many beneicial preferences from the ousted regime of Siad Barre. The term is a new phenomenon that has not been witnessed in the clanised wars of 1991 left behind by the regime. A historical concept and highly controversial analytical instrument, the claim can never capture the complicated nature of the Somali clan cataclysms. It seems to have obviously been inspired by – and remains a slight alteration of the phrase of – “ethnic cleansing”, exercised in Yugoslavia and, to some extent, in Rwanda. Naimark (2002) points out that this was a “term that derived from contemporary journalism rather than from scholarly or juridical sources” (p. 3). The phrase itself is not a useful historic-theoretical term to grasp recent African wars, let alone Somali clan conlicts (Ingiriis, 2013b). The latter are too complex to sort out who was killing who or why. It would be wrong to argue that clan X was killing clan Y for nothing, though.20 The only time wherein what close to genocide occurred in Somalia after 1991 was the time of the Baydhabo death triangle in 1991-1993 (e.g. Prendergast, 1994a). As a result, any reference of cleansing to the 1991 Somalia is problematic at best and lawed at worst, not only because the period was purported as a pseudo-genocidal, but what occurred in Rwanda and Yugoslavia was not identical to the Somali case.21 The tendency in which clanism was used as camoulage for power position has a long historical trajectory in post-1969 Somalia. It is from this political background that the clan cleansing claim has over the years been used by SSDF supporters as a shorthand to argue for a case of permanent inheritance of the post of the Prime Minister in the (current) Somali “federal” government.22 As one government insider puts it: “Whenever the post is illed by a Puntlander politician, one would never hear about clan cleansing or “guryahayagii ayaa xoog na lagaga haystaa” (our properties are being held by force) and all claims end out there”.23 This is not only because those who propagate the claim

18 Issue 14, January 2016 do hold that power would accrue much previous wealth as was in the 1960s all the way down to 1980s, but they also realise that the post of the prime minister would generate more properties by State appropriation. The beneits that might follow with the political power held by one of their own is perceived to be a real recreation of how the State system worked in the past. The political demonstrations in the Diaspora that chants “one of our own must hold the post of the prime minister” often compels the incumbent presidents to appoint a Puntlander, as was done by President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed in 2011, but paused by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud in 2012, although he detracted his earlier position in January 2015. Once the post went to a Puntlander (Puntlanders are not all equal though), it belittles the invocation of clan cleansing as a political tool and this is where the concept as a political resource vanishes.24 Given such an opportunity, repressing manipulated minds to breathe for power with evoking nostalgic moments is deemed compulsory. However, clannish claims of simple attribution of chasing the SSDF to the USC leaderships have been pervaded wide and far. Out of all other Somali leaders, Kapteijns (2013a) – assuming that the 1991 clan convulsions were the primary cause of the armed conlicts – makes General Aideed as her target, condemning him for “crimes against humanity” while partnering herself with none other than his one-time follower and rival warrior Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed who had earlier falsely charged Aideed (obviously to destroy him in writing if he failed on the front) for “cleansing” his clan (cf. Ahmed, 2012; Kapteijns, 2013a, 2013b). However, there are no speeches, recordings, visual proof or any other evidential primary sources in both Ahmed (2012) and Kapteijn’s (2013a, 2013b, 2010b) that could add evidence to their claims. How would a man who saw himself as national leader have behaved such a circumstance which depended on his chance of becoming a president? On the contrary, there are a plethora of YouTube clips – which are purposely avoided to use – showing USC leaders, including General Aideed, admonishing their forces not to shoot anyone who were not on a war front. Recorded at the height of the 1991 clanised wars, one clip shows Aideed himself – with two revered Mogadishu sheikhs in his side – Sheikh Mo’allim Nuur Mohamed Siad and Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Muhyiddiin Eli – giving instructions to his militias not to rob and rape civilians and non-combatants. The clips reveal the two latter sheikhs requesting him to defend the capital from Siad Barre’s soldiers.25 Aideed then gives speech to an audience in which he pledges to confront Siad Barre and his supporters who were trying to recapture the capital. Then he continues to order his forces to “upheld the sense of Somaliness.” This is what he says in the rest of the clip: We are against not the Daarood, but Siad Barre’s tyrannical regime and anyone who supports and ighting for him. These are those whom we are against them. They themselves need to be liberated from Siad Barre to restore brotherhood and justice [and] not to allow for people to be re-colonised again because people

19 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly

are equal. You [the USC militiamen] must respect the people, protect the people you’re liberating, protect the sheikhs, protect the mosques. Face only the enemy, those who are iring at you. If they [Siad Barre’s ighters] commit atrocity, don’t do what they do. Do otherwise which is goodness, for Allah has ordered us to do such (YouTube; translation from Somali into English is mine).26 This conclusive visual evidence appears to contradict Ahmed’s (2012) and Kapteijns’s (2013a) claims that the USC leaders orchestrated, oversaw and ordered a cleansing campaign of certain clans.27 As is evident in Aideed’s speech, it was unreasonable for a man reputed by the most Somali public as liberator and saviour to eat his people at the peak of his popularity. That he subsequently kept his vow also says something similar about his plans. In April 1991, Aideed’s forces captured the southern coastal town of Kismaayo in southern Somalia where his ighters captured General Mohamed Abshir Muuse, a very controversial igure held responsible by Aideed’s advisers for facilitating the merger of the SSDF remnants and Siad Barre’s Red Berets. In 1991, Abshir met a British journalist who visited Kismaayo at the peak of the war. Following was how he expressed himself to the journalist: “There are angry people here [...] I am [clan so and so], I should side with [my clan]” (cited in McGreal, 1991). Few months later, Abshir was captured by Aideed’s forces in Kismaayo while ighting against the USC. A video clip showing Aideed and his advisers deliberating his release is restored on the YouTube.28 In January 1991, at the height of the war, a USC contingent captured and handed Abshir over to the elders known as the “Manifesto Group” who were named after an earlier petition they had written to Siad Barre to relinquish power (Ingiriis, 2012a). Captured with him were General Hoolif, General Abdullahi Hassan Matukade and Abdulhamid Suldaan, as recalled by Hassan Dhimbil Warsame, a Manifesto signatory, after an extensive interview over the phone.29 When 500 Siad Barre soldiers surrendered themselves to Aideed in 1992, he handed them over to the Red Cross. Moreover, he captured additional (almost) 500 ighters who were ighting for the ousted dictator in Gedo. In Aideed’s own words: “I gave strict instructions to the USC commander to make sure that no prisoners or civilians were harmed under any circumstances” (cited in Dualeh, 1994, pp. 176-177). General Jama Mohamed Ghalib, the former Police Commissioner during the Siad Barre regime, observed that “Aideed handed over about ive hundred prisoners captured from Siad Barre’s forces to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).” As a result, “he was not personally accused, let alone proved, of any particular wilful murder of non-combatant civilians” (Ghalib, 2012, p. 152, 166). Whereas there was no single evidence to suggest that the USC leaderships – even though they were in conlict – were instigated and implicated in a campaign of organising or ordering the annihilation of a particular clan, visual evidence abounds that generals Mohamed Said Hersi “Morgan” and Mohamed Haashi Gaani ordering the massacre of the Hawiye, the Isaaq, the Rahanweyn and the Bantu/Jareer in their own territories.30 Their crimes were

20 Issue 14, January 2016 completely cloaked in Kapteijns (2013a), glossing over the responsibility of the regime in supporting the SSDF militiamen to suppress on these communities.

Has Clan Cleansing a Conclusion? Somalia is but one of the most conlict-ridden countries in the whole African continent. State violence was normalised since the military regime came into power on 21 October 1969. After 1977, the irst active armed groups emerged, when the Siad Barre’s regime launched a war against the Mengistu’s Derg regime in neighbouring Ethiopia. Ever since, the country was falling down and down. Many Somalis and non-Somalis seem to have learnt no lesson from the conlicts that had been ongoing for more than three decades. Perpetrators who were involved in the war and beneiciaries disrupted by the war tend to hold grudges of the past conlict due to a feeling of economic deprivations. Similar to the way the Hutu uses the Habyarimana plane crash in 1994 as a site of political memory, certain clan groups continue to use the 1991, a partisan memory to attack the current Somali government. The Toronto clan convention suggests as a concrete reminder of the war consequences, as it was passionate reaction to the appointment by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud of Saa’id Farah Shirdoon, a non-Puntlander businessman. Much of the hate speech in the conference was directed at the President and his Hawiye clan-group. Judged from their own words, the speakers’ messages contained one of venomous unparalleled in other African experiences, even in Rwanda. In manipulating politics from below whilst demanding an exclusive State spoils for clan élites, Abdiwahab Haji Hussein, a younger brother of Abdirizak Haji Hussein, the former post-colonial Prime Minister of Somalia (1964-1967), expressed his views about how the his clan-group should never live alongside with the “Mogadishu clan”. With a highly exclusionary style of hate speech, Abdiwahab insisted: We are not brothers. We are expecting nothing positive from them [the Hawiye]. They are good for nothing. The capital is their city. It is not Somali capital. We can create our own government, our own capital city. Allah did not make us isolated […] You women, you are our real forces. Let us create a separate capital city with separate country and government as we cannot live with them”.31 Importantly, Kapteijns’s account (2013a) has served both biblical and practical purposes for the clan convention in Toronto: irst as a proof of invoking illegitimate clan grievances and second as a momentum of lobbying for the contemporary political competition. Apart from banking on the preference that they were “cleansed,” the reiteration of government and capital city in the hate speech reveals how State power and political positions are interlinked and thus sought in every way possible, whether to incite people to secede or abandon their fellow countrymen. The political power nostalgia is also an indication of how and why Somali conlicts have become one of the longest than any other conlict in post-colonial Africa. Power sharing does not even work politically de-

21 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly structive settings like conlict-ridden Somalia. Jason Sorens and Leonard Wantchekon (2000, p. 16-51) stressed that “power-sharing has succeeded where the parties to the conlict have been ideological or ethnic groups fearful of depredations from each other (El Salvador, South Africa), not groups organized solely for a struggle over economic resources. Some of the world’s most intractable civil conlicts (Sierra Leone, Angola, Zaire, Southern Somalia), on the other hand, have involved primarily a struggle over lucrative resources”. Most of those who gathered the Toronto clan convention were economically uppermost in the Siad Barre regime. All of a sudden, most – if not all – felt compelled to either resorting to welfare or work very odd jobs. In any consequence of conlicts, economic frustrations, family quarrels, marital problems and many other ‘lems’ all become much more dificult than they had been before a war (Prunier, 1995). The rhetoric(s) of victimhood and victimisation – buttressed in the political discourse of the day – then tend to lead to revenge toward a non-existent enemy. Primarily because of the uncivil war, the commonality of Somaliness was destroyed: no more sense of national belonging other than the continual move of either defending or offending each other. It is thus natural that the Somali conlicts are now replete with many count- less adjectives and divergent views as a result of the long war experiences by both the public and politicians. Mamdani (2001) proposes new ways of healing this problem: “The prime requirement of political reconciliation is neither criminal justice nor social justice, but political justice (italics his)”. But how political justice when politics itself is based on an unjust distribution of power? For other Somali clans and communities, the goal of clan cleansing is not literally to get, gain and gather power per se, but is “more fundamentally to use that power, and the sources which it can generate” to overwhelm and oppress those considered to be potential rivals (Chabal and Daloz, 1999, p. 58). Political power does not basically mean access to State spoils, it is also predicts the power to create fear on the so-called “enemy clans”. When viewed from this angle, the claim of cleansing seems to have no conclusion. The lack of conclusion is exacerbated by the recent attempts to construct it as a past history, a history that never was. In the Somali world, empirical observation shows that what one perceives of true history is another’s untrue history. “Written history”, as Scott (1989) writes, “both relects and creates relations of power. Its standards of inclusion and exclusion, measures of importance and rules of evaluation are not objective criteria but politically produced conventions. What we know as history is, then, the fruit of past politics; today’s contests are about how history will be constituted for the present” (p. 681). If history is, then, past politics and politics present history in a conventional way, to the Toronto convenors history is present politics and politics past history. Writing past conlicts and putting it into writing, Ginzburg (1981, p. 90) explains “does not imply that historians, disguised as judges, should try to re-enact the trial of the past [...] The speciic aim of this kind of historical research should be the reconstruction of

22 Issue 14, January 2016 the relationship between individual lives and the contexts in which they unfold” (his emphasis). As Certeau (2000, p. 91) also insists: “History is never sure. The historian does not exert police powers over the past. His mission [should be] more humble and more subtle. The historian is not in charge of speaking the truth, but in charge of ‘di- agnosing the false’”. A metonymy for the former regime, Kapteijns’s (2013a) academic advocacy has contributed more theatrical than truth kin, which remains controversial and clumsy to the Somali setting. Because clan cleansing was framed as victims’ narrative of demanding a share in the state spoils, Kapteijns turns to different trajectory by justifying one clan argument yet arresting the other. In no sense is an attempt made to consider other communities’ narratives. Oddly, she charges one single clan members “responsible for past atrocities” as she sees this would help “force a nation to come to terms with its past as well as to laying to the groundwork for reconciliation”.32 Thus, in her own words, collective innocence should be shelved. Her aim seems to criminalise certain clan, but her statements seems to contradict the claim she sets out to paving the way for victimisation of particular clan. This is where the claim gradually develops into a normative notion that not merely (re)ignites but (re)incites the clan conlicts wittingly or unwittingly while the outcome would undoubtedly plunge Somalia into the cul-de-sac chaos of 1991.

Conclusion The recent avalanche of clan cleansing claims could best be compared with the Somali metaphor of a three blind men where each touches an animal differently yet coming up with different ideas (Ahmed, 2001). Reviewing Kapteijns’s (2013a), Ranger (2014) concluded that the study is a “one woman” project. Thus her ipse dixit. In an interview with the satellite-linked Somali Channel Television, Kapteijns remarked that she cried while writing her work.33 Writing under emotion – which intrinsically means writing under strain – leads the author to play under prejudice and disregard neutrality. In her Emotions in History: Lost and Found, Frevert (2011) reveals some of the results emotions have had in one’s mind, one of which being the loss of balance to clearly think and consider the work at hand. In Clan Cleansing, clan triangulation – that is, using sources from all rival clans to prevent from clan bias – is not employed. The stories of all other armed Somali groups, except for the SSDF, are absent. By going as far and further as to label her critics “deniers” and even “haters”, Kapteijns clearly indulged herself in the Somali clan conlicts.34 That her work was used in a clan conference in Toronto by certain clan group who demanded the post of prime minister in the current Mogadishu government is one among many pieces of evidence that links Kapteijns to politicised narratives. As a result, hers “is not a work of scholarship, but a iction purported to be scholarly designed for certain community”, as one observer described. It appears that Kapteijns’s ear does not hear and appear intolerable to anything short of clan cleansing, as she offered elsewhere a different interpretation that attacks the essence of her

23 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly latest argument: ...the militias and out-of-control bands of violent men did not constitute or represent the whole clan or clan family to which they belonged. Many of those who happened to be members of these clans or this clan family did not want anything to do with this violence, rejected it, tried to stop it, and saved many of those targeted by it. The same is true for the leaders of the (clan-based) armed opposition front that had recruited the ighters, the United Somali Congress or USC. Many of these leaders did not want this violence and tried to prevent and end it’ [emphasis in original] (Kapteijns, 2010a, p. 12).35 In his review on Kapteijns (2013a), titled Some Reϔlections Lidwien Kapteijns, the renowned political scientist David Laitin inds numerous contradictions in the claim of clan cleansing. Laitin (2013) has pointed out how she minimises the clan as a concept and at the same time uses it to argue for a case embedded in contemporary clan politics. One cannot shrug off the fact that the cause of the clanised wars was not linear, but multifaceted and multidimensional as well as – not static but – dynamic. The clanised wars were not only, as Kapteijns (2013a) argued, “instrument[s] of power used to reach particular political goals” (p. 5). To the contrary, the distinctions and divisions of Somali clanship seemed to be stronger than even Lewis’s natural ixed segmentary lineage structure, phraseology seemingly derives from Rousseau (Lewis, 2004; Ingiriis, 2014b). Expounding the clan wars and clanism itself has become the work of many. Surreal and strange as the Somali case seems, even geographers (Samatar, 1992) and politicians (Warsame-Kimiko, 2011) attempted to explore the practice and politics of the clan system.36 This illustrates why the clan concept itself is all for all phenomenon in the Somali case susceptible to misinterpretation after misinterpretation in and out itself. In this article, I showed how analysis can be joined the fray of political conlicts either wittingly or unwittingly. Since the 1991 violence was “communal,” where is the role of the all other clans and sub-clans in such a mutual violence? Why is the concentration of one clan-community? Even the novice reader of the complex issues of things Somali can discover that what occurred in 1991 in Mogadishu was not a clan cleansing. Kapteijns seems more interested in what happened – in this case, the consequence – than what contributed to that happening – in this context, the causes and the roots of what triggered that happening. This is due to the lack the diachronic historical context of her infor- mant-politicians, who (mis) and (ab)use the term Somaliness, without questioning, why, for example, the latter was unworkable during the period of clanised wars in the 1980s and 1990s, but was workable in the era of anti-colonial movements in the 1940s and 1950s. What is nationalism got to do within the context of uncivil war? One can revoke a shallow Somaliness clouded in clanism. Generally uncompromising and unpersuasive as were the narratives of war-torn societies, it appears dificult to be exact in relation to the question of war. Willingly or unwillingly, but unfortunately, Kapteijns fell in this

24 Issue 14, January 2016 trap. In concluding, how many years will the notion of ku-qabso-ku-qadi-maysid (catch and claim the cake and you’ll never be hungry) pursued by political expansionists – and kan-aamusan-hooyadiiba-waa-qadisaa (one who is silent will be hungry in the eyes of his mother) on the part of other Somali clans and communities – dominate the discourse of ‘post’-conlict Somali spaces?

Endnotes 1 ‘Daawo Beesha Daarood oo Samaysatay Xus Ay ugu Magac Dareen Xasuuqi 1991’, http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzPL-ePKfCU, accessed on 4 August 2014. 2 Kapteijns (2013a) is heavily politicised as it describes the clanised wars in advocacy and activist manner, taking a highly partisan position (Ingiriis, 2013b, pp. 112-114). The constructivist theories of kinship used in Kapteijns’s seems to have derived from Simons’s book (1995) without acknowledgement. 3 Said Samatar himself, a Daarood academic who recently passed away in the U.S., viewed the Somali government in Mogadishu as a Hawiye government, because it was led by Hassan Sheikh, a Hawiye (see Samatar, 2013). Nuruddin Farah has also hinted that he does not recognise Hassan Sheikh as a Somali President nor does he sees him someone representing him or his clan. In short, to his mind, Hassan Sheikh is a rival clan President (Farah, 2013). Farah’s diatribe came after the heated dispute between Hassan Sheikh and Farah’s clan Ogaadeen élites over the partial declaration of the clan mini-State of “Jubbaland,” backed by neighbouring Kikuyu-led Kenyan government. This despite the fact that Farah himself has admitted that he met his father in a refugee camp in Kenya wherein the father verbally assaulted (even insulted) a rival clan (in a plain language). He wrote during the height of the war between the Hawiye and the Daarood: “I asked my father why he thought he would be killed, simply because he was from another clan […] ‘Mogadiscio has fallen into the clutches of thugs,’ my father went on, ‘no better than hyenas. Now, could you depend on a hyena to know what honour is, what trust is, what political responsibility means?’” (Farah, 1996, p. 6, 9). 4 The book has endangered a controversy among Somali popular media and chatting groups. For an open letter, see Abdulkadir Osman “Aroma”, “An Open Letter to Professor Kapteijns: A Rejoinder,” Hiiraan Online, March 28, 2013. www.hiiraan.com/op4/2013/mar/28686/ an_open_letter_to_professor_kapteijns_a_rejoinder.aspx (accessed on 17 April 2013). Most recently, one wondered Somali blogger posed a serious question about the political beneits of the book for one community against the other over the State spoils. Available at: http:// www.somaliaonline.com/community/topic/faisal-roble-seems-pretty-obsessed-with-the- book-clan-cleansing/ (accessed on 19 October 2014). For a poem (with explanation) criticising the book, see Eno (2013). 5 Author’s notes, Mogadishu (Somalia), August 1998. 6 On 27 November 2014 at the University of Oxford, I observed two renowned Rwanda specialists looking each other in a very hostile way. So were the interaction between two renowned Sudan specialists who strongly defended their ground with somewhat bitterness. In Lund University in Sweden, two years prior, I also witnessed two other Somalia specialists refusing to greet each other.

25 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly

7 Prunier went afar in publishing another book that blames the RPF for using the genocide as an exercise for their brutality (2009). It appears that he retracted his earlier sympathies with the RPF after the Kigali government had reacted angrily to his work, with one mid-level civil servant describing him a man ‘who claims to be an academic’ and writes a “pseudo-analysis of Rwandan society” (quoted in Reyntjens, 2009, p. 188). For anti-Tutsi attitudes, see also Lemarchand (2011) and Reyntjens (2009). The latter author was expelled from Rwanda by the RPF. 8 Nowhere is this more informative than the cases of Samatar brothers where one of them campaigned against Somaliland by considering an “Isaaq project” but now Ahmed reversed his position by lobbying for Somaliland secession (Samatar and Samatar, 2005). The case of Ahmed Mohamed Adan “Qaybe,” a former ambassador, was also similar. In 1994, before assuming a series of top political position in Somaliland, he told a journalist that Somaliland is “a one-tribe issue,” adding that “[t]he Isaaq want to secede and the other clans are saying no. The others are willing to manage their own affairs locally until such time as a central government is formed” (quoted in Noakes, 1994, p. 53). 9 It is interesting that Kapteijns (2010b) blames Abdi Samatar, a Somali geographer, for giving “a highly partisan lecture mobilising Somalis and raising funds in support of the ‘jihad of national liberation’ from U.S.-supported Ethiopia and the TFG in Mogadishu”. 10 In siding with one clan-group to the detriment of other, Kapteijns (2013a) its perfect for those championing clan interests by joining the clan conlicts. 11 On post-conlict study concerning with South Africa, but close to the Somali case, see Grunebaum (2010). 12 For further revelations on Rwanda, see Mamdani (2001); Melvern (2000); Pottier (2002); and Prunier (1995). 13 For an excellent socio-historical studies on the explosion of the Somali uncivil wars, based on interviews and primary documents from the armed resistance movements, see Bongartz (1991) and Ingiriis (2012a). 14 Kapteijns (2013a) puts adopted clan in the position of the Tutsi victims, the other as the Hutu perpetrators. 15 Literature on Rwandan genocide is extensive and growing and follow the dichotomy of the Hutu versus the Tutsi (Lemarchand, 2011; Mamdani, 2001; Pottier, 2002; Prunier, 1995; Straus, 2006). Rwanda – ruled since the genocide by the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) – is now reputedly considered both as a ‘gatekeeper state’ or even a ‘developmental State’, a reputation which has been afirmed not uncritically by recent scholarship (Booth and Golooba-Mutebi, 2012). 16 Observations drawn from Rwandans in Brussels and London. 17 The colonial authorities preferred the Tutsi to the Hutu. As evident in elsewhere in Africa, the colonial authorities often preferred those held (or were held) to have come from afar. Indeed, colonialism created rapprochement with these groups very easily as they perceived them to share with them the label of “foreign” or “alien” in contrast to those who considered themselves as ‘autochtones’ (natives). Mamdani (2001) has a point – and a very ierce at that – to go as far as to declare that colonialism was the culprit behind the Tutsi and Hutu enmity that resulted in the 1994 genocide. Prunier (1995) has also argued that ethnic favouritism was ‘absent-mindedly manufactured’ in colonial literature.

26 Issue 14, January 2016

18 Only time will tell which policy was correct. But one may discern that both policies have their weaknesses. 19 For other similar ictitious stories, see Kapteijns (2013a). Kapteijns has made a peculiar argument that those who were “cleansed” from Mogadishu – Daarood clan-community, to be speciic – were ‘as much as one half of the population of the capital alone’. If one takes her clan-oriented assumption at face value, all the other Somali clan-groups, clans and communities, who lived in Mogadishu at the time, were the other half, suggesting that Siad Barre’s supporters were the dominant in the city, which is not true. With usual contradictory and inconsistency, she has recently retracted her statement and came up with a much smaller number by observing (obviously with a second-thought) that the “clan-based mass killings and expulsions” in 1991 affected only “tens of thousands of individuals”. 20 The only time wherein what close to genocide occurred in Somalia after 1991 was the time of the Baydhabo death tringle in 1991-1992 (see Prendergast, 1994a). 21 For this observation, see Compagnon (2012). 22 One way one could identify with the identity of the Hawiye and the Daarood élites is to closely follow the tone and tactical arguments crafted through “federal” or “non-federal” lines. Anyone who closes his eyes could discern and distinguish the Hawiye from the Daarood and the Daarood from the Hawiye. The valid question one might pose is this: where are other Somali clans and communities who are more numerous than these two clan-groups? The valid answer is this: they either support one against the other. Had other Somalis stood up and pursue different nationalistic agenda, they would have probably superseded and surpassed both the Hawiye and the Daarood politicians. 23 Oral information from F.A.H., 6 October 2014. 24 The immediate statement released by the Puntland authorities within less than an hour, when Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke was appointed Prime Minister in Mogadishu speaks volumes for this political opportunism. See “Puntland oo si Buuxda u soo Dhaweysay Magacaabidda R.W. Cumar C/rashiid.” Available at: http://hiiraan.com/news/2014/Dec/wararka_maan- ta17-89388.htm (accessed on 17 December 2014). 25 Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oUCpFagnXc, accessed on 30 April 2014. 26 Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMYEwtPyoyQ, accessed on 30 April 2014. By contrast, another video clip on the YouTube shows Colonel Abdullahi Yusuf declaring an all-out-war between his clan and another soon after an interim government was formed in Arta, Djibouti, in August 2000, stating that “the Hawiye were now prepared for war [against the government formed in Arta, led by none other than a Hawiye President].” Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0ri6N5WXi0, accessed on 9 May 2014. The exploitation of Hawiye division worked well with Abdullahi Yusuf who later succeeded to have been selected as Transitional Federal President in a Nairobi hotel in October 2014. 27 This is in part because of selective use of existing data, drawing mainly from media reports at the time. 28 Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFRpRW_JGkI, accessed on 5 August 2014. Later, Abshir attempted to build an Islamic emirate based on clan and had been sympathetic to Al-Itihad Al-Islami, one of the most hard-line Islamist movements that emerged out of the chaotic post-Siad Barre Somalia (Africa Conϔidential, 1992:8). This is not surprising, given the

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unpredictable behaviours of post-colonial Somali leaders to switch not just sides, but also try new ideologies. Abshir was one of the few clan politicians who came to power through the clan nepotism policies in the 1960s Somalia. 29 Telephone interview with Hassan Dhimbil Warsame, 16 April 2014. 30 “Top Secret Tape – Jen. Morgan “Waa Dagaal Daarood iyo Hawiye”, www.Keydmedia.net Exclusive, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Dae00I_qtQ, accessed on 10 July 2014). Following Deyr (1997), Kapteijns (2013a) sympathises with General Morgan. For a recent study on the Bantu plight, see Ingiriis (2012b). 31 “Daawo Beesha Daarood oo Samaysatay Xus Ay ugu Magac Dareen Xasuuqi 1991,” http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzPL-ePKfCU, accessed on 4 August 2014. This was similar to the women in Kismaayo under General Morgan whom Deyr (1997), an SSDF warrior, described – with nostalgic memories – “lafdhabarta dagaalka” (the backbone of the war). For more of these stories, see Ingiriis (2014:225-240). For analyses of gendered power politics, see Ingiriis (2015) and Ingiriis and Hoehne (2013). Achebe (2012, p. 58) reminds that “it is important to state that words have the power to hurt, even to denigrate and oppress others [...] there is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless”. 32 Similar to the ethnic logic of the Kigali government authorities who hold that all moderate Hutus were killed alongside with the Tutsi victims during the genocide, so all the living Hutus are génocidaires, Hawiye civilians – in the eyes of Kapteijns (2013a) are guilty of chasing Daarood out of Mogadishu. 33 “SAADAASHA DHACDOOYINKA Wareysi Prof Lidwein Oo Qortay buug Xaaladaha Soomaaliya 30 10 2013.” Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmKD1Bb9-sU (accessed on 27 December 2013). 34 “An Interview with Prof Lidwien Kapteijns (Ladan) on Somali Arts and Literature,” June 20, 2014. Available at: http://www.wardheernews.com/interview-prof-lidwien-kapteijns-ladan- somali-arts-literature/ (accessed on 19 November 2014). The genealogy of the romantic relationship between Kapteijns and Wardheernews is interesting. This interview was the second within a year conducted by Wardheernews staff, who did not lose any opportunity to exploit Kapteijns’s close afiliation with their clan-group. It is in this spirit that she also went so far as to chastise the UN authorities for not distinguishing “friends and foes” (Kapteijns, 2013b:433) – which is to say, differentiating the Hawiye foes from the Daarood friends. It is understandable, but undesirable, that the Somali websites from which Kapteijns gleans information are clan-based and sectarian online tools, such Wardheernews, a website that propagates the interest of the same clan-group she tries to exculpate, while criminalising all others. Indeed, Wardheernews is among the many Somali websites which compellingly “compete to promote and disseminate the interests and interpretations (of their often clan- identiied) target groups” (Kapteijns, 2009). Elsewhere, she had recommended her readers to glance at a more clannish website ‘allpuntland.com’ (Kapteijns 2013a). For an overview critique, see Ingiriis (2013b, 2013c). 35 This claim was contradictory to her later “clan cleansing” argument in which she accused the same leaders of complicity (cf. Kapteijns, 2013a: chapters 3 & 4). This was part of Kapteijns’s routine targeting of the USC leaders in the clanised conlicts.

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36 Southgate’s argument is acutely itting here that of all people, historians are not like geographers “who drew their maps in terms of their own sometimes very limited perspectives”.

References 1. Achebe, C. (2012). There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra. London: Penguin Books. 2. Adam, H.M. (2008). From Tyranny to Anarchy: The Somali Experience. Lawrenceville, N.J.: The Red Sea Press. 3. Africa Watch. (1990). A Government at War with Its Own People: Testimonies about the Killings and the Conϔlict in the North. New York: Africa Watch. 4. Africa Conidential. (1992, July 3). Somalia: Islamic Uprising. Africa Conϔidential, 33 (13), 3. 5. Ahmed, A.J. (1995). The Invention of Somalia. Lawrenceville, N.J.: The Red Sea Press. 6. Ahmed, A.J. (1996). Daybreak is Near: Literature, Clans, and the Nation-State in Somalia. Lawrenceville: Red Sea Press. 7. Ahmed, A.J. (2001). The Three Blind Men and the Elephant: In Search of a Holistic View of Somalia. In M. S. Lilius (Ed.), Variations on the Theme of Somaliness (pp. 31-40). Turku, Finland: Åbo Akademi University,. 8. Ahmed, A.Y. (2012). Halgan iyo Hagardaamo: Taariikh Nololeed (Struggle and Conspir- acy: A Memoir). Stockholm: Scansom. 9. Aroma, C. (2005a). Sababihii Burburka Soomaaliya: Yaa Iska Leh Eedda Qaranjabka? (2nd edition). Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Percetakan Zafar. 10. Aroma, C. (2005b). Tiirka Colaadda: Maxay ka Curteen Colaadaha Sokeeye? (2nd edition). Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Percetakan Zafar. 11. Augelli, E., & Craig, N.M. (1995). Lessons of Somalia for Future Multilateral Humanitar- ian Assistance Operations. Global Governance, (1), 339-365. 12. Bahadur, J. (2011). The Pirates of Somalia: Inside Their Hidden World. London: Proile Books. 13. Bakonyi, J. (2009). Moral Economies of Mass Violence: Somalia 1988-1991. Civil Wars, 11 (3), 434-454. 14. Besteman, C. (1996a). Violent Politics and the Politics of Violence: The Dissolution of the Somali Nation-State. American Ethnologist, 23 (3), 579-596. 15. Besteman, C. (1996b). Representing Violence and “Othering” Somalia. Cultural Anthro- pology, 11(1), 120-133. 16. Besteman, C. (1998). Primordialist Blinders: A Reply to I. M. Lewis. Cultural Anthropol- ogy, 13 (1), 109-120. 17. Besteman, C. (1999). Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery. Phila- delphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 18. BBC Two. (2014). Rwanda’s Untold Story, BBC Television. 19. Berry, J.A., & Pott, B.C. (1999). Genocide in Rwanda: A Collective Memory. Washington, DC: Howard University.

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20. Boddy, J. (1997). Writing Aman: The Perils and Politics of the Popular Book. Anthropol- ogy Today, 13 (3), 9-14. 21. Bongartz, M. (1991). The Civil War in Somalia: Its Genesis and Dynamics. Uppsala: Nor- diska Afrikainstitutet. 22. Booth, D., & Golooba-Mutebi, F. (2012). Developmental Patrimonialism: The Case of Rwanda. African Affairs, 111 (444), 379-403. 23. Braeckman, C. (1994). Rwanda: Histoire d’un Génocide. Paris: Fayard. 24. Brehun, L. (1991). Liberia: The War of Horror. Legon: Adwinsa Publications. 25. Brons, M.H. (2001). Society, Security, Sovereignty and the State: Somalia, From Stateless- ness to Statelessness?. Utrecht: International Books. 26. Brunk, D.C. (2008). Curing the Somalia Syndrome: Analogy, Foreign Policy Decision Making and the Rwandan Genocide. Foreign Policy Analysis, 4 (3), 301-320. 27. Buhaug, H., & Rød, J.K. (2006). Local determinants of African civil wars, 1970-2001. Political Geography, 25 (3), 315-335. 28. Castagno Jr., A.A. (1964). Somali Republic. In J. S. Coleman & C. G. Rosberg (Eds.), Politi- cal Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa (pp. 512-559). Berkeley: Univer- sity of California Press. 29. Certeau, M. (2000). The Possession at Loudun. (M.B. Smith trans.). Chicago: The Univer- sity of Chicago Press. 30. Chabal, P. , & Daloz, J.-P. (1999). Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument. Oxford: James Currey. 31. Compagnon, D. (1995). Ressources Politiques, Régulation Autoritaire et Domination Personnelle en Somalie: Le Régime Siyyad Barre (1969-1991). (Unpublished doctoral dissertation), Université Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, I and II. Pau, France. 32. Compagnon, D. (2012). State-sponsored violence and conlict under Mahamed Siyad Barre: the emergence of path dependent patterns of violence. Retrieved on 24 No- vember 2014 from http://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2013/10/22/state-spon sored-violence-and-conlict-under-mahamed-siyad-barre-the-emergence-of-path-dependent-patterns-of-violence/. 33. Des Forges, A. (1999). Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda. New York: The Human Rights Watch. 34. Deyr, D.C. (1997). Qaran Dumay iyo Qoon Talo-Waayey. Nairobi, Kenya: Mam & Bros. 35. Dualeh, H. (1994). From Barre to Aideed: Somalia: The Agony of a Nation. Nairobi: Stel- lagraphics. 36. Eno, M.A. (2013). Guilt of Otherness: Poems. London: Adonis & Abbey. 37. Farah, N. (2013, October 14). Somalia’s Leader: Look Past the Hype. The New York Times, The Opinion Pages. 38. Frevert, U. (2011). Emotions in History: Lost and Found. Budapest: Central European University Press. 39. Fujii, L. (2009). Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Uni- versity Press. 40. Ghalib, J.M. (2012). Somali Phoenix. N.P.: N.P.

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41. Ginzburg, C. (1981). Checking the Evidence: The Judge and the Historian. Inquiry, 18 (1), 79-92. 42. Grunebaum, H. (2010). Memorializing the Past: Everyday Life in South Africa after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. London: Transaction. 43. Gourevitch, P. (1998). We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux. 44. Government of Rwanda. (2008). Constitution of the Republic of Rwanda, Article 51, 179. 45. Hanley, G. (2004). Warriors: Life and Death among the Somalis. London: Eland. 46. Hintjens, H.M. (1999). Explaining the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 37 (2), 241-286. 47. Huband, M. (1992, August 6). Death Beyond Understanding, MarkHuband. Retrieved from http://www.markhuband.com/death-beyond-understanding/ 48. Ingiriis, M.H. (2012a). The Making of the 1990 Manifesto: Somalia’s Last Chance for State Survival. Northeast African Studies, 12 (2), 63-94. 49. Ingiriis, M.H. (2012b). Redeining Somaliness through the Bantu-Jareer Community: The Absent Somalis in Somali Social and Political Landscape. In M. Fois & A. Pess (Eds.), Politics and Minorities in Africa (pp.71-99). Milan: Centro di Studi Africani in Sardegna. 50. Ingiriis, M.H., & Hoehne, M.H. (2013a). The Impact of Civil War and State Collapse on the Roles of Somali Women: A Blessing in Disguise. Journal of Eastern African Studies, 7 (2), 314-333. 51. Ingiriis, M.H. (2013b). Review Essay: Clan Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991 (Review of the book Clan Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991). Africa Today, 60 (2), 112-114. 52. Ingiriis, M.H. (2013c). Review Essay: Clan Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991 (Review of the book Clan Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991). Journal of the Anglo-Somali Society, 54, 61-63. 53. Ingiriis, M.H. (2014a). Motherhood and Memory: Suffering, Survival and Sustainability in Somali Clan Wars. In D.C. Phelan (Ed.), Mothers and War: An International Perspective (pp. 225-240). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 54. Ingiriis, M.H. (2014b). Review Essay: Milk and Peace, Drought and War, Somali Culture, Society and Politics, Essays in Honour of I. M. Lewis (Review of the book Milk and Peace, Drought and War, Somali Culture, Society and Politics, Essays in Honour of I.M. Lewis). African and Asian Studies, (13), 373-377. 55. Ingiriis, M.H. (2015). Sisters; was this what we struggled for? The Gendered Rivalry in Power and Politics. The Journal of International Women’s Studies, 16 (2), 376-394. 56. Kapteijns, L. (2009). Discourse on Moral Womanhood in Somali Popular Songs, 1960- 1990. The Journal of African History, (50), 101-122. 57. Kapteijns, L. (2010a). I.M. Lewis and Somali Clanship: A Critique. Northeast African Studies, 11 (1), 1-24. 58. Kapteijns, L. (2010b). Making Memories of Mogadishu in Somali Poetry about the Civil War. In L. Kapteijns & A. Richters (Eds.), Mediations of Violence in Africa: Fashioning New Futures from Contested Pasts (pp. 25-74). Leiden: Brill.

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59. Kapteijns, L. (2013a). Clan Cleansing: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991. Philadelphia: Univer- sity of Pennsylvania Press. 60. Kapteijns, L. (2013b). Test-iring the “New World Order” in Somalia: The US/UN Mili- tary Humanitarian Intervention of 1992/1995. Journal of Genocide Research, 15 (4), 421-442. 61. Kiwuwa, D. (2012). Ethnic Politics and Democratic Transition in Rwanda. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 62. Laitin, D. (2013, November 12). Some Relections on Lidwien Kapteijns (2013) Clan Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991. World Peace Foundation. Retrieved from http://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2013/11/12/relections-on-lidwien- kapteijns-clan-cleansing/. 63. Le Sage, A. (2002). Somalia: Sovereign Disguise for a Mogadishu Maia. Review of Afri- can Political Economy, 129 (91), 132-138. 64. Lemarchand, R. (2011). The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa. Philadelphia: Uni- versity of Pennsylvania Press. 65. Lewis, I.M. (1992, August 30). In the Land of the Living Dead. London Sunday Times. 66. Lewis, I.M. (2002). A Modern History of the Somali: Nation and State in the Horn of Africa (4th ed.). Athens, Ohio: University Press. 67. Lewis, I.M. (2003). Recycling Somalia From the Scrap Merchants of Mogadishu. North- east African Studies, 10 (3), 213-224. 68. Lewis, I.M. (2004). Visible and Invisible Differences: The Somali Paradox. Africa: Jour- nal of the International African Institute, 74 (4), 489-515. 69. Lewis, I.M. (2008). Understanding Somalia and Somaliland: Culture, History and Society. London: Hurst. 70. Mamdani, M. (2001). When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Geno- cide in Rwanda. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 71. McGreal, Ch. (1991, April 7). The Lost Continent: A Nation Waits For Famine and Re- venge. The Independent. 72. Melvern, L. (2000). A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide. Lon- don: Zed Books. 73. Menkhaus, K. (2006/07). Governance without Government in Somalia: Spoils, State Building, and the Politics of Coping. International Security, 31 (3), 74-106. 74. Naimark. N.M. (2002). Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 75. Noakes, G. (1994). Somalia’s Last Foreign Minister Warns Somaliland on Secession. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 12 (7), 53. 76. Omaar, R. (1995). Death, Despair and Deϔiance (revised edition). London: African Rights. 77. Pottier, J. (2002). Re-Imagining Rwanda: Conϔlict, Survival and Disinformation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 78. Perlez, J. (1992, December 29). Witnesses Report a Somali Massacre before U.S. Arrival. The New York Times.

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79. Pijovic, N. (2014). To Be or Not to Be: Rethinking the Possible Repercussions of Somali- land’s International Statehood Recognition. African Studies Quarterly, 14 (4), 17-36. 80. Pottier, J. (2002). Re-Imagining Rwanda: Conϔlict, Survival and Disinformation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 81. Prendergast, J. (1994a). The Bones of our Children are not yet buried: The Looming Spec- tre of Famine and massive Human Rights Abuse in Somalia. Washington: Centre of Con- cern. 82. Prendergast, J. (1994b). The Forgotten Agenda in Somalia (Brieing). Review of African Political Economy, 21 (59), 66-71. 83. Prunier, G. (1995). The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide. London: Hurst. 84. Prunier, G. (2009). Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe. London: Hurst. 85. Ranger, T. (2014). Book Review: Clan Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991 (Review of the book Clan Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991). The Ameri- can Historical Review, 119 (4), 1404-1405. 86. Reyntjens, F. (2009). The Great African War: Congo and Regional Geopolitics, 1996-2006. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 87. Reyntjens, F. (2013). Political Governance in Post-Genocide Rwanda. Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press. 88. Richards, P. (1996). Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth & Resources in Sierra Leone. Oxford: James Currey. 89. Rogge, J. (1993). The Challenges of Changing Dimensions among the South’s Refugees: Illustrations from Somalia. International Journal of Refugee Law, 5 (1), 12-30. 90. Routhke, P. (2011). The Right to Secede under International Law: The case of Somali- land. Journal of International Service, 20 (2), 35-48. 91. Samatar, A. (1992). Destruction of State and Society in Somalia: Beyond the Tribal Con- vention. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 30 (4), 625-641. 92. Samatar, A.I., & Samatar, A.I. (2005). International Crisis Group Report on Somaliland: An Alternative Somali Response. Bildhaan, 5, 107-124. 93. Samatar, S.Sh. (2013). Tribute to The Mighty Genius of Somali Clanism. WardheerNews. Retrieved from http://www.wardheernews.com/tribute-to-the-mighty-genius-of-so mali-clanism/. 94. Scott, J.W. (1989). History in Crisis: The Others’ Side of the Story. American Historical Review, 94 (3), 680-692. 95. Shokpeka, S.A. (2005). Myth in the Context of African Traditional Histories: Can it be Called “Applied History”?. History in Africa, (32), 485-491. 96. Simons, A. (1994). Somalia and the Dissolution of the Nation-State. American Anthro- pologist, 96 (4), 818-824. 97. Simons, A. (1995). Networks of Dissolution: Somalia Undone. Boulder, Colo: Westview Press. 98. Sorens, J.P., & Wantchekon, L. (2000). Social Order without the State: The Case of Soma- lia. New Haven, United States: MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies.

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99. Southgate, B. (2006). History: What & Why? Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern Perspec- tives. Abingdon: Routledge. 100. Straus, S. (2006). The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. 101. Time. (1994, August 1). This is the Apocalypse. Time. 102. Verhoeven, H. (2012). Nurturing Democracy or Into the Danger Zone? The Rwandan Patriotic Front, Elite Fragmentation and Post-Liberation Politics. In M. Campioni & p. Noack (Eds.), Rwanda Fast Forward: Social, Economic, Military and Reconciliation Prospects (pp. 265-280). Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. 103. Warsame-Kimiko, M. (2011). A Different Perspective: For Long Lasting Peace and Sta- bility in Somalia. Nairobi: N.P. 104. White, L. (1983). A Colonial State and an African Petty Bourgeoisie: Prostitution, Property, and Class Struggle in Nairobi, 1936-1940. In F. Cooper (Ed.), Struggle for the City: Migrant Labor, Capital, and the State in Africa (pp.167-194). Beverley Hills, Calif.: Sage.

34 Issue 14, January 2016

India: Conϐlict over Natural Resources. A Study on Jharbadhali Micro Watershed in Odisha

Suman DEVI Niharranjan MISHRA

Abstract. In India, especially in rural areas, people mainly depend on natural resources for the livelihood. Due to the immense importance of natural resources, the potential to create conϔlict among the resource users exist. The term ‘watershed project’ has initiated for the conservation of natural resources such as land and water. In the case of Watershed Development Programme (WSDP), the conϔlict is found to be relevant as it has a number of stakeholders. The conϔlict occurs because of unequal sharing of resources and the inability of Planning Implementing Agency (PIA) to establish the ‘resource use agreement’ among the users. Under the above background, the present study is carried out at Jharbadhali micro watershed, located at Balangir district of western Odisha. The speciϔic objective of the present study is to ϔind out the causes of the conϔlict and involved mechanisms in the conϔlict resolution process. The sociological methods, like the case Suman DEVI study, unstructured interview schedule and Focus Research Scholar (Ph.D) Group Discussions (FGDs), have been used to fulϔil Department of Humanities & Social the objectives of the study. The analysis of data Sciences, National Institute of reveals that the intervention of new institution in Technology, Rourkela, Odisha the form of the watershed project has disturbed the traditional mechanism of resource manage- E-mail: [email protected] ment and the cause and process of conϔlict resolu- Niharranjan MISHRA tion have become more complex. Assistant Professor Keywords: Conϔlicts, Natural Resources, Department of Humanities & Social Jharbadhali Micro Watershed. Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, Odisha E-mail: [email protected] Introduction Natural resources are essential for the ex- Conlict Studies Quarterly istence of human society. These resources Issue 14, January 2016, pp. 35-48 can be categorised as water, land, air and forest. Natural resources form a base for

35 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly the livelihood to the millions of the population. The importance of natural resources has given rise to conlicts in many parts of the world (Ghee & Valencia, 1990). In some cases, natural resources give rise to the intrastate conlicts. As a result, both national and international organisation has taken the initiative to resolve the conlicts. It has become a matter of concern in natural resource-rich countries (Annegret, Miriam & George, 2011). More often, natural resources are held responsible for conlict between the resource users. Natural resources contribute signiicantly to the economic growth of developing country like India. In India, especially in rural areas, people mainly depend on natural resources for the livelihood. The government of India has implemented watershed projects in a massive manner to conserve the natural resources. Watershed is an attractive unit for technical intervention to manage water and land resources. The studies conducted by different governments, NGOs and researchers have assessed the impact of watershed programmes on the livelihoods and in most of the cases, they have found positive results. The watershed project has a signiicant impact on the agricultural and non-agricultural incomes, employment, forestry, cropping pattern and productivity of different crops. It adopts the most suitable land planning and agricultural practices that improve soil moisture, reduce soil erosion and improve agricultural productivity through crop diversiication. The watershed project reduces the soil erosion, increases the level of surface and ground water, increased water resources lead to good agricultural productivity and helps in debt reduction, also improves the yield growth rate and crop intensity (Farrington, Turton, & James, 1999; Bhattacahrya, 2008). The watershed resources (water, land and forest) are trans-boundary resources in nature and they are shared by a number of users. Consequently, it creates conlicts. The conlict occurs because of unequal sharing of resources and the inability of Planning Implementing Agency (PIA) to establish the resource use agreement among the users. The concept of conlict refers to a disagreement between two individuals or institutions or groups. The chances of conlict are more when two related parties are divided by incompatible interests or goals or fall in a state of competition for the control of scarce resources. While discussing culture and conlict, Avruch differentiates conlict from dispute and concludes that “Conlict refers to some fundamental incompatibility in the very structure of a relationship and dispute refers to a particular episodic manifestation of a conlict. A dispute is a social activation “that occurs when at least one party goes public with the conlict, brings it to the attention of others in the group or community or decides to act on it” (Avruch, 1998). In the case of natural resource management, the conlict of interest arises between the users and non-users. Different degrees of access to resources are often a cause of conlict among its users (Stanbury & Lynott, 1992). These resources could be agricultural lands, water, and common grazing land and forests resources. Both users and non-users prefer to manage these resources in their way. The disagreements and incompatibility among two or more groups in using and managing these natural resources are an inevi-

36 Issue 14, January 2016 table phenomenon in all human societies. Since the implementation of natural resource management programs (NRMP), the intensity of conlict has increased over the time. Further, the conlict among the user groups affects the level of participation and sustainability of the livelihood. Due to the relevance of conlict in general and in the area of NRMP in particular, identiication of the sources and causes of conlict is essential for prioritizing the same. Accordingly, an understanding of the historical and cultural background and the duration of the conlict is necessary (Hasnain & Hasnain, 2006). Conlict is generated by multiple groups who claim to own natural resources (Baviskar, 2003). Tania (2003), in her study in Indonesia, found that, after the fall of Suharto regime in 1998, resource conlicts have generally been classiied into two categories: 1) vertical conlicts that arose between rural people and the state or state-sponsored corporations; and 2) horizontal conlicts that took place between one social, ethnic or religious group against another. Differences arise because different stakeholders have different needs and perceptions. In this situation, the failure to arrive at a decision that meets the needs of all stakeholders generates conlict. For instance, to avoid conlict in the case of watershed project management, male preferences with respect to the use of water for irrigation need to be compatible with female concerns for use of water for domestic use and other purposes. Concerning the watershed development program, understanding conlict is necessary to run the project smoothly. Conlicts in watershed programs may occur at different levels, they may take place between the Watershed Committee (WC) and the User Groups (UGs), the WC and the Self-help Groups (SHGs), the SHGs and the UGs. Sometimes it may also arise within Watershed Association (because it is heterogeneous entity) or between farmers and the PIA for the selection of a site of watershed physical structures or among watershed secretary, presidents and UGs. Conlict may also occur between landholders and landless and between the farmers having land on upper reach and lower reach farmers. The mechanisms adopted to resolve these conlicts involved both formal and informal systems. The formal methods include local courts while in informal methods a negotiation was done by mediators, mostly by the elderly members of the village. It was observed that the conlicts arose due to some factors like: lack of planning of management of watershed resources without the consultation of the local community, limited involvement of people in the watershed project, the institutional arrangements, lack of awareness and lack of coordination between the PIA and user groups. Other factors of conlict include week monitoring and evaluating procedures, unequal distribution of watershed resources and the ineffective role of the village council in resolving the conlicts. On the other hand, it was observed that the chances of conlict are less due to some elements of gender, class and age as they restrict the violent attitudes of certain groups and individuals. It is observed that women groups avoid expressing their grievances because of fear, lack of trust and social pressure. The poor and women feel marginalized and face economic

37 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly constraints and they are mostly excluded from decision-making procedures in the conlict resolution process. The elderly too are less likely to involve in a conlict because of their physical constraints. In the present paper, an attempt is made to understand causes of conlicts associated with the sharing of watershed resources and involved mechanism in the conlict resolution process. The study also analyses the traditional and modern patterns of conlict resolution process in the watershed program. The irst section of the paper gives the description of the traditional conlict resolution process. The second section explains the case studies of conlicts found in the real ield conditions. The third section concludes the paper.

Methodology The present study is based on the empirical data collected from Jharbandhali micro watershed, Agalpur Block of Bolangir district in Odisha. Methods such as case studies, interview and participant observation of everyday life and practices of the villagers have been taken into consideration. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from each household using the household schedules. The secondary data was collected from the NGOs records, Gram Panchayat (GP) ofice, District Rural Development Agency (DRDA), Government reports, available literature and reports of Project Implementing Agency (PIA).

Location and People Bolangir district in Odisha is situated between 23o30’16” to 23o38’36” North latitude and 83o13’26” to 83o19’30” East longitude in West Central Agro-climatic Zone. The Jharbandhali micro watershed comes under Western Orissa Rural Livelihood Project (WORLP) scheme and Sabuja Viplav, NGO acted as a Project Implementing Agency (PIA). The project was implemented in the year 2003-04 and handed over to the community in the year 2010. Total geographical area of the studied watershed is 606.62 hectare and the total treatable area is 528 hectares (ha). Under treatable area, the total arable land is 318.12 hectare; out of this upland, medium land and lowland consists of 67.56 hectares, 55.98 hectares and 69.49 hectares respectively. Total cultivable waste land is 55.76 hectares and grazing (gochar) land is 56.46 hectare, respectively. This watershed characterized by erratic rainfall, inequitable social structures, distorted land distribution, indebtedness, gender and other inequalities. Agalpur block is situated about the 27-kilometre distance from district headquarter. Total households residing in this watershed is 167, all the households have taken as the universe of the study. Multi-ethnic groups are living in this watershed area. The ethnic group are Scheduled Caste (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), Other Backward Community (OBCs) and General castes. The watershed village is mainly dominated by the OBC households because of its numerical strength and they are well off in comparison to other castes or communities. Agriculture is the main source of livelihood for SCs and STs communities; they also

38 Issue 14, January 2016 work as agricultural labours. The OBC households derive their livelihood both from the agricultural and non-agricultural (petty business, service sector, etc.) practices. The general castes are mostly rich households and they are engaged in the service sector. Most of the farmers belong to the semi-medium and medium farmers are OBCs and GC communities.

Methods of data analysis The data collected from both primary and secondary sources. The data is analysed by using the quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative data is organised and classiied. The analysis is presented in the form of tables and percentages. The qualitative data analysis took place with the help of the ield notes, case studies, observation, interview, documentation, conceptualization and information gathered from the beneiciaries and watershed oficials, etc. Map 1 shows the location of Jharbandhali micro watershed.

Aims and objective of the study The main objective of the present study is to explore the relationship between use of watershed resources and conlict among different stakeholders. In the process of study, an attempt is made to illustrate the conlicts that inluence the watershed project implementation. In the course of the analysis, the traditional way of conlict resolution and frequency of conlict has discussed in different phases of watershed project implementation. The speciic objective of the research is as follows; To ind out the causes of conlict and involved mechanism in the conlict resolution process.

Map 1. Location of the Jharbandhali micro watershed Source: Planning implementing agency of Jharbadhali micro watershed

39 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly

Traditional Conϐlict Resolution Approaches It was observed that, traditionally, the conlicts over the use of natural resources were not frequent in the village. The social customs, values and norms were more effective, which helped in strengthening the social bonding among the villagers. The collective conscience among the villagers was higher, in the case of intra-community or intra-village conlict arose, it was resolved by the traditional village chief. The inter-village and inter-community conlicts were also resolved by the village chiefs and villages council members. As agriculture was a dominant source of livelihood in most of the cases, the reason for the conlict was conined to the water sharing of the village pond. Before the introduction of the watershed programme, the traditional village councils were playing an essential role in managing the water problems and conlicts. In a traditional society, if any conlict relating to the conservation of natural resources took place the community used to resolve it. If they failed to solve the disputes by themselves, they used to take the matter to the village chief. Village chief used to interfere only if the villagers approach him/her. After that, the traditional village council would resolve the conlict. In case the dispute could not be resolved at the village level, it used to be referred to the next level of appeal, i.e., statutory Panchayat. If they were unable to resolve the problem, they approached the police and law courts. It was observed that the traditional village chief generally belonged to either the elite group or an upper caste group. All the villagers irrespective of their caste and community used to abide by the village chief’s order. It was also observed that the most respectable caste group Brahmin community would also respect chief even if he belonged to a tribal community. The village chief was called ‘Gauntiya’. The villagers directly approached Gauntiya to register their complainant. Gauntiya was an elderly man of the village and he got the position of a village chief based on his ownership of land (medium farmers, who possessed land more than 20 acres) irrespective of his caste or community. The traditional leadership of Gauntiya was hereditary. Gauntiya used to instruct conlicting parties to inform the villagers regarding the place and time of the meeting in which their conlict has to be resolved. Generally, the meeting would be held in the evening as it was a convenient time for all the farmers. By evening all of them would get back from their agricultural ields. Sometimes the meeting used to run more than a day till the conlict got resolved. Usually, the meeting used to be held in the village mandap (stage). In case of rain, the meeting used to be shifted to the residence of Gauntiya. The conlicting parties usually took the responsibility of passing the information to all the villagers. On the day of the meeting, all the elders of the village used to gather at a speciied place. The participation of women in the meeting was very low and even if they were present, their opinions were not taken into consideration. Women were called only if they were involved in the conlict or if they were the eyewitnesses. In the assembly, villagers were free to ask the questions to the conlicting parties.

40 Issue 14, January 2016

The process was fairly democratic in nature. The village community’s views were taken seriously in a traditional village council, before arriving at any judgment. The Gauntiya did not take the decision independently, but he involved other elders present at the meeting to analyse the dispute and to cross-examine the witnesses if necessary. The Gauntiya used to cross-examine the truthfulness of witnesses from many aspects. In this case, the witness might have to take an oath on his/her ancestors and it was considered to be taken seriously. The village elders had rights to question them regarding the causes of the dispute. Generally, they used to ask the time and place of conlict, the reason of their presence, the matter he/she saw, what they did. Depending on the nature and seriousness of the case the meeting was organized. In some cases, the problem was resolved during the irst gathering of the villagers. However, if it was not solved, then they called the meeting again and if the case was too complex, it used to take two or three meetings. After the examination of the facts and views of the witnesses, the village chief used to discuss all the dimensions of the case and based on the nature of the crime the penalties were announced. Gauntiya used to deliver the judgment and tell the culprit to pay the compensation in cash or in kind to the opposite party. The penalties were in the form of compensation, in the form of money or repairing anything that has been damaged. For example, if they broke the water harvesting structure or open well, they had to get it repaired by using their labour and money. If someone took more water from the village pond or littered on it, he/she had to organize a feast for all the village council members. There were some other forms of penalties also. For example, giving some bottles of local wine to the village council members and throwing a party. If the convicted party did not obey the judgment passed by the village council, the villagers socially and economically ostracized him/her. Table 1 shows the view of villagers about the causes and frequency of conlict in traditional society. It can be depicted from the table that the frequency of the conlict was very less. The chief reasons for less conlict were the suficiency of natural resources, simple conlict resolution system and equal distribution of resources. The conlict for the water resources sharing used to take place at the time of drought and Rabi season cultivation. In both above mentioned periods, the scarcity of water took place. The majority of the farmers informed that most of the time conlict used to take place on the sharing of water. The frequency of conlict was twice in a year. Table 1. Causes and frequency of conlict in traditional society (before watershed)

Causes of conlict Frequency of conlict Conlict over unequal water sharing Twice in a year Uses of forest resources Once in a year Uses of grazing land No conlict Uses of village common land No conlict Uses of other natural resources Once in a year Source: Field study

41 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly

Table 2 indicates the frequency of conlict after the introduction of the watershed project. It is found that after watershed the conlict over the different natural resources has increased. Degradation of resources, industrialisation and increasing population are the main reasons attributed to it. It was observed that more often the conlict is taking place on the uses of water and forest resources. The conlict on water resources used to occur during Kharif and Rabi seasons. The term Kharif and Rabi seasons are derived from the Arabic language, the irst refers to the autumn and second means spring. In Indian context, these two terms are used to divide the cropping seasons into two parts. Kharif cropping season starts from July-October during the south-west monsoon and Rabi cropping season starts from October-March. It was found that due to deforesta- tion and increasing population the forest resources are becoming scarce, which results in conlict. The conlicts over the grazing land, village common land and other natural resources have also increased, comparatively. Table 2. Causes and frequency of conlict after watershed project

Causes of conlict Frequency of conlict Conlict over unequal water sharing Thrice in a year Uses of forest resources Thrice in a year Uses of grazing land Twice in a year Uses of village common land Once in a year Uses of other natural resources Twice in a year Source: Field study

The next section of the paper will be discussing the case studies found during the ield study. The case studies of the conlict have found between watershed beneiciaries and between PIA and beneiciaries.

Case I In Jharbandhali micro watershed, ifty-year-old Teka Ghibhela and ifty-seven-year-old Dino Bhoi of the Danipali village had a conlict during the year 2000. This conlict was of an intra-village and inter-community in nature. While Teka Ghiblea belongs to the Gouda (OBC) community, Dino Bhoi is a Sahara (ST) farmer. Both of them own land near the Ghaikhayicanal that bypasses the Danipali village. Teka Ghiblea is a semi medium farmer owning more than ive acres of land and Dino is a marginal farmer having less than 2.5 acres of land adjacent to the property of Teka. While Dino has his land in the lower region of that canal, Teka has land in the upper reach. Being a marginal farmer Dino was poor, agriculture was the only source of livelihood for him. In the month of May-June, the water level in the canal was low and the monsoon was uncertain. Therefore, all the villagers and the elderly members and the Gauntiya had

42 Issue 14, January 2016 appealed to all farmers to share the existing water equally. As there was no proper drainage system, the water has to pass through Teka’s land to reach Dino’s land. In this context, Dino requested Teka to release more water to his land but Teka refused and built a bund in drainage so that more water cannot low from his land to Dino’s land. Because of this, Dino could not get more water for irrigation. Teka also did not listen to the appeal of Dino’s friends and relatives. Finally, Dino along with his relatives approached the village council and council chief (Gauntiya). After this, they arranged a meeting in the village for inding a solution by taking both the parties into consideration. In the meeting, the Gauntiya heard both the parties and also the witnesses from both the sides. The Gauntiya, after consultation with the elders, arrived at a decision that Teka was found guilty of not allowing more water to Dino’s land and he also put a barrier that prohibited the free low of water. As a solution to this conlict, the village council members warned Teka not to repeat the mistake. After the meeting, Teka had to offer wine and meat to all villagers present at the meeting. Teka obliged by the decision of Gauntiya. The above case indicates that the traditional village chief had the power to resolve the conlicts. The power and authority that is vested with village chief promotes social solidarity and maintains the social order. The resolution of this conlict shows that the village chief took a fair decision and no discrimination was made on the basis of land- holdings size of the farmer. This shows that everyone is equal before the law.

Inter-village and inter-ethnic conϐlict During the ield study, it was observed that few cases that fell into the category of inter- village and inter-ethnic conlict were referred to outside the village Panchayat. In that meeting, the Sarpanch of the villages, conlicting parties, witnesses and elderly members or Ex-Sarpanch was used to be present. The following case studies from illustrate the conlict between two farmers belonging to two different villages.

Case II In 1998, a conlict between two farmers belonged to two different villages was referred to Sarpanch. Conlict arose between Jharu Nag, a 55-year-old farmer of Danipali village and Manglu Sagar, a 48-year-old farmer of Jharbandhali village. They belonged to Gonda community and both of them were landless and used to cultivate the government forest land for nearly ive years. As the land did not belong to them, a proper demarcation was not made by them. While Jharu’s land is situated in an upper reach of the watershed area, Manglu’s land is located in middle reach. Once Jharu had cut some trees and shrubs for selling and domestic use, which was nearer to the Manglu’s land. On seeing the act of Jharu, Manglu abused him and also lodged a complaint with the village chief. After having a discussion in the meeting, Gauntiya (village chief) found both of them guilty as they had encroached upon the government land and ine was imposed on each of them.

43 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly

Manglu accepted the judgment, but Jharu refused. He told that though the land was not his own, he had been cultivating it for ive years, so he had rights over the trees. As the village council members failed to convince Jharu, they had no option but to refer this case to the Sarpanch of Bendra Panchayat. A Sarpanch is elected by all the villagers; he/she is the head of the grassroots level statutory institution of local self-government called as gram panchayat (village government). After a few days, the Sarpanch called a meeting in which Manglu, Jharu and senior members from both Danipali and Jharbandhali village were present. After listening to both the parties their respective witnesses and also the village chiefs of both the villages, the Sarpanch imposed ine on both of them. Jharu was told to give some share of money to Manglu as he sold the trees while Manglu was told to offer some wine to villagers present at the meeting. Both of them accepted this judgment After the introduction of the watershed program, the inter-village conlicts relating to agricultural irrigation, accessibility of common land and water bodies or intra-gener- ational conlict for the construction of Water Harvesting Structure (WHS) on private land were mostly taken to the Planning Implementing Agency (PIA). With the implementation phases of the watershed project during 2004-2010 the conlicts were more over the sharing of water of percolation pond, use of forest land, grazing the land and other natural resources on common land. Planning Implementing Agency (PIA) did not deine ownership of these resources to the user groups. After the implementation of watershed project villagers mainly approached the PIA for the conlict resolution. Watershed oficials established a conlict resolution centre (Samadhan Kendra) in the village. But this institution did not sustain in the post-project period. Inter-village disputes or conlict may arise at the time of implementation of watershed if the people see that, adjoining village is getting more facilities for water conservation. Besides this conlict also occurs when people cross the boundary of one village to access the watershed resources, forest resources, and common land resources.

Case III In 2006, the PIA oficials of watershed organized a meeting in Danipali village. During the discussion over watershed works to be carried out, a group of people who were not satisied with the works of PIA started abusing. Later on, the conlict arises between the villagers of Daniplai and Jharbandhali village. The oficials of PIA failed to resolve this conlict that led to the breaking off communication between the two villages for a year. The implementation of the watershed project was stopped in the Danipali village in 2006 that runs only for two years (from 2004-05 to 2005-06). At the time of the interview with the beneiciaries, it was found that people did not approach the elder members and not even the Sarpanch and statuary Panchayat of the village to solve this problem. The respondents replied that they did not approach any other conlict resolu-

44 Issue 14, January 2016 tion body as the matter was related to the implementation of the watershed project for which PIA is solely responsible.

Case IV In 2006, a conlict arose between two brothers over the construction of farm pond on the private land. They were Khadi Pradhan, a 45-year-old farmer and Jibardhan Pradhan, a 32-year-old farmer. After the implementation of the watershed, they got back their mortgage land. The PIA helped them inancially to get it back. Both of them were marginal farmers and were belonged to the Dumal community. While Khadi Pradhan’s land is situated in the upper reach of the watershed, Jibardhan Pradhan’s land is located in the lower reach. The construction of ield bunding took place on the high land. The land was not divided between two brothers. It was still in the name of their father (Arjun Pradhan, 60-year-old). But the real land owner (Arjun Pradhan) had agreed to get it registered in the land of his younger son (Jibardhan Pradhan). Field bunding started on their land before the cultivation. When ield bunding was in progress on the land of Jibardhan Pradhan at that time Khadi Pradhan started abusing him. Khadi Pradhan wanted the ield bunding on his land. Later on both of them (Khadi and Jibardhan), started ighting with each other. Looking into the situation the PIA stopped the construction work and asked them to compromise. However, both of them did not agree for any compensation or agreement. PIA tried to solve this matter but failed to satisfy both the parties. After this incident both of them approached the Sarpanch of Salebhata Panchayat to intervene in this matter without consulting the village chief. They narrated the incident to the Sarpanch in the Gram Sabha meeting. After discussing the issue in the Gram Sabha meeting, the village Sarpanch called a meeting at Panchayat ofice at Bendra, where elder members of Gram Sabha were invited. After hearing the point of view of both the parties and their respective witnesses, Sarpanch requested them to compromise but they did not. Sarpanch postponed this matter for one month, which did not bring any solution. Therefore, Sarpanch instructed both the parties to meet the PIA as this case was related to the watershed project. They approached PIA but PIA refused to intervene as the fund for construction of ield bunding, and implementation phase of the watershed was over. At the end, none of them got the ield bunding on their land. The above case shows the inability of PIA to resolve the conlict.

Grass-root level institutions and PIA’s role in conϐlict resolution Before the introduction of the watershed project, people were mostly dependent on informal institutions (village chief and elderly members of the village) for the conlict resolution. After watershed project they are dependent on watershed oficials for conlict resolution. However, it was not mentioned in the watershed guideline (2001) that PIA has to resolve the conlict but PIA has given the responsibility for the smooth func-

45 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly tioning of the watershed project in a particular area. The case study discussed below will relect at what level the PIA was able to resolve the conlicts among the beneiciaries.

Case V A conlict took place between PIA oficials and watershed beneiciary in 2005. Baru Sagar, a 60-year-old marginal farmer of Jharbadhali village had a conlict with watershed oficials. He belonged to Gonda community and he had three sons named Shushil Sagar (40 years aged), Kausal Sagar (35 years aged) and Rudra Sagar (32 years aged). Agriculture and daily wage labour were their main occupation. During the implementation of the watershed, they got a farm pond (Chahala). When they were digging a pit, a big stone hampered farm pond work. Baru drew the attention of PIA oficials about this matter. However, his grievance was not responded positively. PIA oficial asked them to contribute some money so that re-digging could have been possible, but they were not inancially sound to contribute the money. Once when the PIA oficials were constructing farm pond on someone’s land, Baru went there and shouted at them. However, it was only verbal abuse. Baru did not approach any of the conlict resolution body before approaching PIA oficials. On the other hand, PIA was unable to deal with the conlicts with the farmers but they did not approach any elder members of the village for mediating in the matter. The PIA did not follow the traditional local socio-cultural approach for dispute management. Further, it discourages people’s faith in their created conlict resolution institutions. It also created a situation for the watershed beneiciary regarding whom they should approach for the conlict resolution if once PIA withdraws from the watershed area.

Socio-cultural aspects of conϐlict and watershed development programme It came into notice that the conlict was not only conined to the sharing of watershed resources but also related to the social relations. And sometimes the social conlict got diverted to sharing of watershed resources. It was found that most of the inter-caste conlicts arose and symbolically they relected in day to day social interactions in watershed activities. Some of the conlicts are infused in the caste differences and they got manifested into a conlict of watershed resources sharing.

Conϐlict over leadership At the village level, many grass-root level institutions were created such as Self Help Groups (SHGs), Kisan Mitra (farmer’s friend), Gram Sabha, Statutory Panchayat and watershed committee. Most often conlicting situations arise when the leaders of some institutions come together for a particular meeting with selish interest. At the time of the creation of different committees of watershed, it was observed that the leaders of various institutions contested for the post of president and watershed secretary. During the discussion with the contesting candidates, it was found that most of them

46 Issue 14, January 2016 wanted to occupy the positions of president and secretary for monetary grants and the power associated with the positions so that they could help their friends and relatives to construct the water harvesting structures easily. The Sarpanch of the village played a signiicant role in the selection or nomination of the name of the watershed president or secretary. It was observed that watershed president and the secretary cannot win or cannot do their work without any political support. Local level political interference sometimes disturbs decision-making power of the watershed president and leaders. Individual and community interests over the use of resources along with ethnic differences have made the situation more and more complex and conlict oriented. For some beneiciary watershed project created opportunities to avail the water and other natural resources but for fewer groups it deprived them of achieving their interests.

Conclusion From the above analysis, it is clear that before the introduction of the Watershed Development Programs (WSDP), the conlicts over natural resources use were very rare. The conlict resolution was not a very complicated process and the traditional village chief used to resolve the disputes with the help of the village elders. The nature of penalty was dependent on the paying ability of the conlicting parties. If the culprit was able to pay money, he had to pay or else he had to put in his labour to get the things repaired. Sometimes he or she was warned by the village chief not to repeat his/her mistakes in future. The people used to respect their traditional culture and village chief. The next conlict resolution body after the village chief was the village Sarpanch and if the traditional village council failed to solve the case it is resolved by the Sarpanch of statutory Panchayat. The cases hardly went to the third level i.e. police station. The introduction of WSDP made the situation little complicated. The Project Implementing Agency (PIA) was primarily responsible for resolving any problem related to the watershed resources use. In the case of a conlict regarding the watershed resource use, people approached the PIA irst to address their grievances rather than traditional village chief. Few of the farmers believed that their proximity to the watershed oficials might fetch them extra beneits in terms of watershed assets and inancial help. Some of the villagers went to the PIA frequently in a hope of getting some permanent employment. It was also found that the introduction of WSDP has created a competition for the use of natural resources. It brought signiicant changes in conlict resolution system. Before the introduction of the watershed project, the causes of conlicts were lesser or it was only conined to the overuse of forest resources. But after the introduction of the watershed project various dimensions of the conlict has emerged. People competed for the use of more natural resources of village common land at the cost of others and individuals and also struggled for the private ownership of few of common

47 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly property resources. Fighting for leadership, money, proit-making attitude and ight for the construction of water harvesting structures has increased the tension in watershed villages. The causes of conlicts were found to be similar in most of the cases. However, in all the cases, the PIA failed to resolve the conlict completely. Besides the inability of the PIA to resolve the conlict, the lack of adjustment of the new institution with the traditional one has also created a problem in the process of conlict resolution. The ideology that beneiciaries should control their watershed resources and run the program smoothly with the collaboration of external agency is yet to be realized.

References 1. Annegret, M., Miriam, S., & George, S. (2011). Conlict Prevention through Natural Re- source Management? A Comparative Study. German Institute of Global and Asian Stud- ies, Working Paper no. 158. Retrieved from www.gigahumburg.de/workingpapers. 2. Avruch, K. (1998). Culture and Conϔlict Resolution. Washington, D.C: US Institute of Peace Press. 3. Bhattacharya, A. (2008). Sustainable Livelihood Based Water Management-“Watershed Plus” Approach. Manila. Retrieved from http://www.iges.or.jp/en/ea/activity080731. html. 4. Baviskar, A. (2003). For a Cultural Politics of Natural Resources. Economic and Political Weekly, 38 (48), 5051–5055.doi.org/10.2307/4414342. 5. Farrington, J., Turton, C., & James, A.J. (1999). Participatory Watershed Development: Challenges for the Twenty-ϔirst Century. London: Oxford University Press. 6. Ghee, L.T., & Valencia, M.J. (1990). Conϔlict over Natural Resources in South-East Asia and Paciϔic. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 7. Hasnain, N., & Hasnain, A. (2006). Conlict and Conlict Resolution in Natural Resource Management: The Case Utilization of River Water in Harda (M.P). In H.S. Saksena (Ed.), Scheduled Tribes and Development (pp. 550-561). New Delhi: Serials Publication. 8. Kerr, J. (2002). Watershed Development, Environmental Services, and Poverty Al- leviation in India. World Development, 30 (8), 1387-1400. doi.org/10.1016/S0305- 750X(02)00042-6. 9. Shanker, V. (1999). Some Thoughts on Watershed Development. Journal of Rural Devel- opment, 18 (3), 359-379. 10. Singh, P., Behera, H.C., & Singh, A. (2010). Impact and Effectiveness of Watershed Devel- opment Programmes in India. Mussoorie: Centre For Rural Studies. 11. Stanbury, P., & Lynott, J. (1992). Irrigation Management and Conlict Resolution. In Ine- quality and the Commons, the Third Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property (pp. 1-26). Washington D.C: Indiana University Press. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10535/870. 12. Tania, L. (2003). Situating Resource Struggle: Concept for Empirical Analysis, Economic and political weekly, 38 (48) 5120-5128.

48 Issue 14, January 2016

Liberia: Cross-Cultural Healing for Former Child Soldiers

Charles WRATTO

Abstract. In recent years, the issue of child soldiering in Africa has captured international attention and it is no longer a secret that children in war are subjected to brutal recruiting methods that involve, but not limited to, cruel trainings, torture, the killing of community or family members, cannibalism, dehumanization and the application of rituals sacriϔices which are believed to protect and make a warrior fearless against an enemy in battle. Agitated by drugs, alcohol, revenge, to mention a few, they are, in most cases, forced to commit terrible atrocities that are beyond human imagination. While these children faithfully execute their “duties” and are viewed as “heroes” by their commanders during wartime, they are, in peacetime, stigmatized and considered impure by the people they once lived among. This is partly so because, in traditional African society, it is held in the highest esteemed that reintegrating a wrongdoer into his former community without any form of spiritual puriϔication could contaminate the entire clan and lead them into misfortune. Similarly, it is believed that until a warrior is puriϔied from the pollution of battle and death, he cannot experience inner peace or total healing. This paper will examine the application of traditional puriϔication rites and western therapeutic trauma mechanisms as approaches used by a local peace building organization (the Charles Wratto Foundation), for the successful reintegration of former child soldiers in rural Liberia. Among other things, the various treatments and support methods applied by traditional healers, community members and western practitioners are discussed. Keywords: Liberia, former child soldiers, cross-cultural healing, indigenous puriϔication, western psychology, reintegration.

Charles WRATTO Overview Ph.D. Student Photographs of child soldiers bearing College of Political, Administrative arms and ammunitions have lashed on and Communication Sciences television screens and appeared on the Cluj-Napoca, Romania front pages of newspapers all around the E-mail: [email protected] world. Nonetheless, contrary to the im- Conlict Studies Quarterly aginative views of many non-Africans, the wars in Africa are not conined to the use Issue 14, January 2016, pp. 49-60 of western made military equipment alone. Instead, they involve, to a greater extent, the

49 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly application of deep-rooted and extreme tribal rituals that requires human or animal sacriices prior to combat. Reveling in his memoirs, A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah, a former Sierra Leonean child soldier, provided interesting insights not only on the uses of marijuana or a toxic mix of cocaine, which he described as brown-brown, or advanced military hardware as a driving force that devastated his country. Rather, Beah emphasized on the role of magical rituals indoctrination and animistic beliefs in African wars (Beah, 2007). Similarly, in his book, The Redemption of an African Warlord, General Butt Naked, a Liberian rebel leader, gave a detail and graphic description of how he would dismember and offer the life of a virgin child to his god (Nya-ghe-a-weh), before going into battle. According to the general, following the eating and drinking of the sacriiced child’s heart and blood, he and his men will strip themselves naked and go on the of- fensive as they were now believed to be invisible to bullets and knives (Blahyi, 2013). As a spiritual advisor to Samuel Doe, the then Liberian president and the high priest of his tribe, Blahyi (2006) understood that the introduction of tribal rituals in modern warfare would certainly strike fear and horror into the hearts and minds of his much larger and better-equipped enemies. While observing the religious dimension of the conlict, Ellis (1999, p. 264), noted that during the Liberian civil war, military and political ambitions were considered worthier than the life of a human. Consequentially, ritualistic killings became a common practice among both government and rebel forces. The consumption of human lesh for the acquisition of spiritual powers were initially sacred to certain individuals within the various military groups and they were exclusively based on fragments of their tribal beliefs systems. However, due to the military successes and gloriication of these men by their comrades in arms, many children soon became indoctrinated into this barbaric and dehumanization process by their commanders. Among other things, cannibalism, rape and the destruction of communities were all strategies designed to eliminate the child soldiers of every humanistic gesture. Hence, the role of children in heinous crimes left them stigmatized and made their reintegration process extremely challenging even twelve years after the war has ended.

Why Cross-Cultural Healing? The tribal and religious dimensions of conlicts in Africa are complex in nature to the extent that achieving a positive result would require a conlict manager or psychologist seeking healing and community reintegration for war-affected children in Liberia and indeed in Africa, to, irst and foremost, acknowledge that the ordeals and experiences of Africans are interpreted through the religious and cultural settings of their communities. Therefore, suggesting that recovery processes remain focused on a system or philosophy they know little or nothing about is yet to be proven effective. Alternately, when rebuilding post-conlict societies, the need to identify and integrate traditional dispute resolution mechanisms is signiicant in achieving the desired results (Chereji & Wratto, 2013).

50 Issue 14, January 2016

Literature Review While exploring the place of culture and addressing the psychosocial impacts of conlict on child soldiers in Uganda El Salvador and Angola, Verhey states that indigenous puriication provides acceptance of the child by assuaging the ill spirit associated with the child’s actions during the war and reconciling him/her with ancestral spirits (Verhey, 2001, p. 3). Furthermore, in the 1992 “Agenda for Peace of the United Nations,” peacebuilding was described as ‘actions to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conlict (Mani, 2002, p. 12). Also supporting these views, Cockell (1998, p. 9) contends that ‘a sustainable peace can only be founded on societal resources for intergroup dialogue, cooperation and consensus.” As such, the incorporation of traditional mechanisms of conlict resolution into the mainstream peace process not only helps to contextualize conlict management, but also facilitates the participation of local people who are usually left out of the search-for-peace processes and ensure the sustenance of endangered indigenous formations (Osaghae, 2002). Without a doubt, there are elements of African traditional beliefs which are deeply rooted in the continent’s unending wars; be that as it may, the use of these practices to harm people is straightly prohibited by indigenous principles. Thus, despite condemnation by many international organizations regarding traditional healing methods which are dismissed as unscientiic and primitive, it is worth mentioning that certain aspects of indigenous practices in Africa are unique, not only to evil military activities such as in the cases of general Butt Naked, Joseph Kony and other warlords, but also important tools to the peace building processes in post-conlict African societies (Chereji & Wratto, 2013). There is nothing wrong with western dogmas of conlict resolution in themselves, however, the concepts and contexts under which they are employed to address conlicts in Africa undermines the social and religious settings of the people. As a consequence, scarce and precious resources are wasted, as achieving the overall objective of peace and stability becomes a major challenge, especially in areas affected by civil wars (Chereji, 2014). To briely illustrate this, we shall consider western-trained personals, consisting of nurses, medical doctors, counselors, psychologists and social workers as a case study. When addressing a child soldier situation in an attempt to provide a psychological balance for the individual, these professionals are likely to begin with an interview or speciic guidelines that are largely based on a set of questionnaire that may focus on the following: • How did the child become a soldier? • What did he/she experience as a child soldier? • What are the consequences of his/her war experiences? • If giving a second chance, would they want to become a soldier again? • Would they like to revenge the deaths of the loved ones? • Now that the war has ended, do they feel abandoned by their commanders?

51 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly

For most practitioners, this approach may seem to be the best. Nevertheless, as one who broke his silence eleven years after the war, if applied at the earlier stages of the recovery process, without taking into account the cultural background of the child, these questions are more likely to have a negative impact on the emotional wellbeing of the child than positive ones. Additionally, it is important to mention that this paper does not advocate indigenous mechanisms as better than other approaches. However, it does points to the fact that, in this regard, a combination of cross-cultural healing strategies or mutual respect for unconventional therapeutic trauma mechanisms could be useful both for the practitioner and the patient. What is more to this, contrary to the above-mentioned approach, is that oral manifestation of the events from a traditional point of view isn’t considered a necessary condition for the treatment. According to Marato and Honwana, traditionalist view recounting traumatic experiences as reopening the door for harmful spirits to penetrate the community. As started in their studies conducted in Mozambique on healing war trauma, they reviled that recalling the traumatic experience through verbal externalization as means of healing is not always effective. Hence, healing is achieved through non-verbal and symbolic procedures that are understood by those participating in it (Marato, 1996; Honwana, 1997, 1999). In addition, Boyden & Gibbs (1996) have shown that in Cambodia, individual therapy conducted by modern psychotherapists can be ineffective because it does not account for the place that ancestral spirits and other spiritual forces have in the causation and healing processes. Furthermore, by focusing exclusively on the individual alone, they argued that it undermines the family and community efforts in providing affection and support for the child in question. Also noted by Green & Honwana (1999), these cleansing and puriication rituals involving child soldiers have the appearance of what anthropologists call rites of transition. In other words, the child undergoes a symbolic change of status from someone who has existed in a realm of sanctioned norm-violation or norm-suspension (i.e. killing, war) to someone who must now live in a realm of peaceful behavioral and social norms. Mbiti equally observed that Africans are notori- ously religious with each tribe having its own religious system based on a set of beliefs and practices. Religion, as stressed by Mbiti, permeates into all aspects of life so fully that it is impossible to isolate (Mbiti, 1961, p. 1). Also in their review on the progress made by the International Rescue Committee on the implementation of a reintegration project for Liberian and Sierra Leonean child soldiers, Williamson and Carter (2005, p. 13), recommend traditional healing and religious support as measures essential to the successful reintegration of former child soldiers.

Comparative Analysis Liberia, and indeed Africa, is home to indigenous principals that have regulated the affairs of its people for centuries. However, the unending conlicts in the continent have displaced most of these principles for decades. To make matter worse, the traditional

52 Issue 14, January 2016

African religion, a pillar upon which indigenous societies function, has come under direct attack by the importation of foreign values (Chereji & Wratto, 2015). For instance, the rapid spread of Christianity by western missionaries in the Sudan has had a devastating impact on the local Dinka culture. As they saw it, the missionaries considered the persecution of Black Africans in the South by the Arab North as a punishment from God. Therefore, in an attempt to remove this “curse,” the destruction of indigenous shrines and sacred objects was encouraged through a systematic removal of the old religion with a replacement of a new one. Hence, the sociocultural and religious ramiication of this move led over 90% Dinkas to abandon their ways of life and regarded themselves as Christians (Human Rights Watch/Africa, 1997). See Hutchinson (1996) for more on religion and African civil wars. Symmetrically responsible for these limitations is the inability of African governments to introduce frameworks that will access traditional healers based on the quality of their works as well as provide adequate resources and suitable environments in an effort to promote this knowledge at a national level. Hence, this lack of interest from the state has not only discouraged most African youths from participating in the preservation of their cultural heritage, to a certain degree, but has also raised an army of dishonest impostor seeking to steal from the sick. As a reper- cussion, the former undermines indigenous healing and provides a platform for most western trained practitioners to continually disrespect and ignore the call for a rethink in terms of trauma intervention in African. Understandable, the aforementioned has left unanswered questions regarding the legitimacy of local healing capacity in the minds of most Africans. Although essential to the healing and reintegration process of former child soldiers in Liberia, during the survey, the researcher observed that indigenous mechanisms alone wouldn’t be enough in addressing the situation. Among other things, apart from the challenges facing traditional societies in taking on this task alone. In recent years, there has been, to a certain degree, an improvement in knowledge regarding western therapeutic interventions in post-conlict Africa. Therefore, working together would deinitely provide a unique opportunity for western trained personnel’s to observe, investigate and possibly understand as well as collaborate with indigenous healers when the need arises. At the end of the research inquiries regarding suitable methods for a successful reintegration scheme, the researcher concluded that western therapeutic trauma techniques or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which were designed for American war veterans returning from Vietnam in the 1980s, only provide temporary solutions. Therefore, PTSD strategies alone wouldn’t also be enough in the healing and reintegration processes of former child soldiers when applied in Liberia. As viewed by Honwana (1997), PTSD techniques were conceived as instruments in dealing with psychological distress in people who went from a situation of relative ‘normality’ into a traumatic experience (the war), and then returned to ‘normality’, as stressed by Honwana. Unlike

53 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly the Americans experience in Vietnam, the difference here is that the vast majority of war-affected children in Africa were either born in or grew up during the war. Hence, the need to seek a favorable mechanism in addressing the situation was required and it was therefore in this regard that the study focuses on combining indigenous puriication rites and western therapeutic techniques as suitable approaches for the integration of former child soldiers in rural Liberia.

Initial Survey of the District In her commemoration speech on the 10th anniversary of the Peace Agreement that brought the Liberian civil war to an end, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf praised the nation’s post-conlict recovery strategy and boasted of the successes of UNMIL, the United Nations Mission in Liberia.1 Without a doubt, Liberia has experienced years of stability and peace. Nevertheless, the research survey shows that the lack of a successful reintegration program for former child soldier in rural Liberia poses the greatest threat to the security of the country, and if not addressed carefully, the situation could escalate into the unthinkable and have a damaging impact on years of hard work done by the international community. As mentioned above, the research took place in Kparblee District, a region bordering Liberia with the Ivory Coast and a major crossing point for rebel groups during the civil war. Like most conlicts in Africa, villages within the district were captured multiple times (by different armed groups), in an effort to recruit children. Today, there are at least ive thousand former combatants in the region most of whom were children during their time of active combat. As observed by the researcher, the district is completely isolated from the rest of the country and the nearest high school is three days walk away. There are no hospitals in the area and access road to the district is almost impenetrable. According to a local chief, “the last rehabilitation of the road was in 1975”. As a result of the deplorable road condition, we also observed the uses of motorbikes as public transportation and ambulances to convey the sick to Ganta, the nearest city eight hours away on the Liberian side of the border. Giving that the inhabitants are subsistence farmers, most of whom cannot afford the high transportation cost to Ganta, Toulepleu, an Ivorian border town less than twenty minutes walk from the district has become the lifeline for the people. However, with the Ivorian frontier heavily guarded due to their recent civil war, many youths crossing from the Liberian side of the border in search of their daily needs now ind themselves trapped between militant groups and government forces. If caught by government troops who often accused them of being mercenaries, they are killed, imprisoned or in few cases, handed to the Liberian government as foreign ighters to face the required punishment

1 “No to War!” Statement by H.E. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf at Commemoration of the 10th Anniversary of the Signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement on August 18, 2003.

54 Issue 14, January 2016

(Dennis, 2014). If caught by the militants, they are beaten and in most cases, forced to pick up arms for their cause (Bavier, 2012). According to local respondents, the situation has become more complex than ever. As they pointed out, the youth with military backgrounds (in the district) was strongly against the idea of getting involved in the Ivorian civil war. Nevertheless, with the separation from their relatives by colonial boundaries (Tonkin, 2010) still fresh in their minds, as well as their subsequence exclusion from the Liberian and Ivorian societies, including the recent detentions of family and community members by both governments, many now feared that the current state of affairs could provide the youth with a moral justiication to join militant groups seeking revenge against the Ivorian government. Frustrated by their sufferings and isolation, the zone chief warned about retaliation and started that, “these unfavorable conditions have left us with a feeling of fear and neglect from the government, and until something is done to adequately address the situation, we feared that our children and community might once again experience the horrors of war”.2

Research Methodology The study applied a semi-structured research method in which highly respected individuals such as local chiefs, women and youth leaders, pastors, former combatants and traditional healers were interviewed. During the interview sessions which were aimed at identifying and addressing the most urgent needs of the community, chief Jefferson emphasized the impact of the civil war and added that it left a vast majority of the youth mentally sick. The chief further stressed on the lack of an educational center as a contributing factor responsible for the backwardness of the district. Regarding the illnesses, he revealed that “traditional measures are currently taking place in dealing with the situation, but without some forms of education or trade, we risk losing them to the war across the border”. Focusing on the circle of farming life, the women leader went on to say, “our fathers and their fathers before them were farmers, we too are farmers and so be our children. It is a hard life, but farming is much better than war. Although helping them to recover, we are constantly afraid of our children because of the bad spirits they got from the war”3. A similar perspective was offered by the youth leader who said, “we are not interested in these wars because our lives are offered in achieving the political agendas of politicians who often forget us, once in power, in addition, we do not want our children to become farmers, but with nothing else to do in the face of such dificult realities, these are the options available to them”4. The researcher noted the issues mentioned as challenges facing the district and requested to:

2 Interview with Chief Jefferson, the traditional leader of Kaylay and Dubuzon Kingdoms. 3 Interview with Ma Nancy, the women leader of Kaylay Kingdom, in Kparblee District. 4 Interview with Daniel Clack.

55 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly

Through the help of the Charles Wratto Foundation (CWF), • Facilitate the building of a high school in the district? • Observe the traditional cleansing rites (mention by the chief) in an attempt to provide suitable trauma counseling and victim-support networks where former child soldiers will assist and dialogue with their peers on issues relating to violence and post-conϔlict victimization, as well as prepare them for job opportunities that will help prevent them from future participation in violence? Despite concerns of contradictory motives, the elders approved the research proposals regarding the construction of a high school and request to observe and participate in the traditional cleansing rites. Determined to help and keeping in mind the cultural and religious norms as sensitive elements in maintaining a healthy relationship with the community, the research strategy was adjusted and within one month, construction of the school started on a land provided by the community. Amongst the volunteers for the ongoing construction works were the dreaded and stigmatized young men of the community who said, in a statement presented by a spokesman, “just tell us what to do, and we will obey”.

Applying Both Therapeutic Trauma Mechanisms As deined by Errante (1999), a psychotherapeutic intervention is “anything that helps a child elaborate his/her experiences, give meaning to them and build a bridge necessary for integrating those experiences”. Green & Honwana (1999) also gave an extensive overview and stress that a therapeutic technique is questionable if centered on the individual patient and ignore local beliefs or undermines family and community involvement. Taking these views into account, the irst step we applied during this project was to reinforce the cultural and religious worldview of former child soldiers and their communities as a starting point for their treatment. To achieve this, the researcher col- laborated with traditional healers in order to provide a unique reintegration framework.

Indigenous Mechanisms The traditional puriication rites performed for youth with military backgrounds were aimed at dealing with their wartime experiences and rebuilding their morality. During these ceremonies: • The healers spoke to ancestral spirits who were believed to be unhappy and pleaded forgiveness on behalf of the youth and the community through an act of incantations. • The former soldiers were isolated from their communities and taken to shrines and locations of spiritual signiicance where they were given sacred herbal medicine to drink. • Their clothes and other objects from the war were burnt or washed away in a river to symbolize an end to a life of violent and the beginning of a peaceful life.

56 Issue 14, January 2016

• They were taking to streams for sanctiied bath and were told not to look back upon emerging from the river. Doing so was considered reopening the door to the evil war spirits and inviting them to harm the person • The healers pleaded with the spirits of the dead asking them to take the illness away from the former ighters. The act of pleading with the dead was signiicant and symbolic because it is believed that the spirits of the dead have driven their killers insane. During the Liberian civil war, brutality grew into its worst when every rebel group attempted to instill terror and be viewed as the most dreaded ighting force in the country. Hence, children lacking military experience were ordered to eat the hearts of their captured enemies if they desired to be invisible to bullets (WesternVoices1, 2011). However, giving the scarcity of an enemy’s heart, the deinition of an “enemy” was redeined from anyone opposing you in battle to those outside your ethnicity. Needless to say, this led to the deaths of innocent people falsely accused of being “enemies”. These counter-productive acts had nothing to do with tribal protection. Rather, they were strategies aimed at keeping the soldiers on constant alert. While it is true that alcohol and drugs were used to inluence a child soldier’s decision, not the less, once cleared from the body, the sense of human is restored and the soldier who hasn’t slept for days can get a few minutes rest or relect on his actions. For the commanders, this was a great risk to their cause. As they saw it, an untrained soldier who didn’t believe in their ideology was likely to defect if giving a moment to relect on the morality of the war. Hence, aware of the magnitude of mental torment associated with killings, soldiers were ordered by their commanders to commit murders in ways that were almost unimaginable. Today, the bleeding spirits of the innocent lives that were taken during the war are believed to be hunting their killers. Regardless of how they were recruited, the atrocities committed as well as the emotional and psychological scars carried by former and current child soldiers are much heavier than any arm on their shoulders. Therefore, informed of these experiences, the healers performed separate ceremonies to appease the spirits of the dead during the traditional cleansings rituals. In Liberia and indeed in Africa, war-related trauma is strongly believed to be caused by avenging spirits of those killed during the war but were denied their place in the ancestral world due to the lack of a proper burial. Accordingly, these spirits are believed to be extremely harmful towards their killers and community members. See (Honwana, 1996, 1997), for more on these spirits. Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that the rituals performed vary depending on one’s involvement in the war. While some rituals may address those who participated in the war but did not kill; others are focused on murderers.

Non-Indigenous Therapeutic Trauma Mechanisms As agreed with the chiefs, prior to granting an audience to the researcher regarding their past, the youth was required to journeyed through the religious Pilgrimage men-

57 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly tioned above. It is important to bear in mind that these religious rites were signiicant to the reintegration efforts because it was only after such rites were performed that the individuals were “fully” accepted back into the community. Furthermore, the degree of torture they endured as well as the atrocities committed and witnessed by these ex-combatants differ from persons to persons, therefore, our intervention strategies were adjusted on different levels to meet the physical and psychological needs of each individual.

Psychological Approach The researcher, also the founder of CWF, brought together a team of volunteers that consisted of a medical doctor, a counselor and a psychologist. Combining their expertise, they carefully focused on the overall well-being of the ex-combatants and provided support where it was most needed. The core areas included their military exposure, worldviews & beliefs, passions, inspirations, role models and future goals. While exploring these sensitive areas involving their war experiences, the uses of drawings and cultural symbols to identify a sense of remorse, shame, grief and excitement was employed. In addition, sessions were organized enabling the ex-combatants to provide trauma counseling and victim-support networks where they assisted and dialogued with their peers on issues relating to violence and post-conlict victimization. Furthermore, emphases were placed on their social and family ties. No longer perceived as children but evil men, they were abandoned by their community for far too long, for this reason, separate platforms were arranged for families and community members who gave their blessings and provided moral and social supports. As part of our long-term peacebuilding strategy for the district, both tribal leaders and ex-combatant were trained to discuss tolerance and lead peace-building activities in their respective villages.

Conclusion The involvement of children as key players in African wars raises more questions than answers regarding the continent’s future. Child soldiers in conlict zones across the region are exposed to some of the most heinous crimes on earth and yet, more children are still being dragged into this madness who will then have to live with the repercussions of wars. As reported by Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, more than 9,000 children have been recruited in the South Sudanese civil war (The EastAfrican, 2014) and 7,000 in the Democratic Republic of Congo according to Peace Direct (nd.). Similarly, a crisis-statistics released by UNICEF on May 6, 2014, indicates that an estimated 6,000 children are associated with armed groups in the Central African Republic (UNICEF, 2014). The list goes on and varies from country to country. However, the research experiences in Kparblee district shows that among other things, when taken into account, the productivity of indigenous mechanisms goes far beyond family and community reuniication and extends to the prevention of child

58 Issue 14, January 2016 voluntary recruitment into military groups. As mentioned above, to the researcher’s arrival in the area, efforts were being made not only to wash the bad war spirits away from the youth with military backgrounds but also actions were taken to prevent their participation in the Ivorian war. Furthermore, since most of these children were born, raised and forcefully recruited from their villages, it is worth mentioning that their healing or recovery processes most equally include traditional cleansings rite as they cannot be fully forgiven or accepted by the community for some of the crimes committed (i.e.: cannibalism & human sacriices) unless they are puriied. The degree to which this is understood among local people was underlined by one of the villagers who said, “The sickness disturbing our children do not require the assistance of civilized doctors, doing so will only complicate the situation”.

References 1. Bavier, J. (June 6, 2012). Militias attacking Ivory Coast from Liberia: HRW. Reuters. Re- trieved from http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE85516Q20120606?irpc=932. 2. Beah, I. (2006). A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. New York: Sarah Crichton Books. 3. Blahyi, J.M. (2006). From Priesthood to Royal Priesthood. Lagos: C.R.M. Press. 4. Blahyi, J.M. (2013). The Redemption Of An African Warlord. The Joshua Blahyi Story: A Modern Day Conversion From Saul To Paul. Shippensburg: Destiny Image Publishers Inc. 5. Boyden, J., & Gibbs, S. (1997). Children and War: Understanding Psychological Distress in Cambodia. Geneva: UN. 6. Chereji, C.R. (2014). Is Separatism a Viable Solution for the Present African Wars? Con- ϔlict Studies Quarterly, 9, 3-12. 7. Chereji, C.R., & Wratto, C.K. (2013). West Africa. A Comparative Study of Traditional Conlict Resolution Methods in Liberia and Ghana. Conϔlict Studies Quarterly, 5, 3-18. 8. Chereji, C.R., & Wratto, C.K. (2015). Aspects of Traditional Conlict Management Prac- tices among the Ogoni of Nigeria. Conϔlict Studies Quarterly, 10, 56-68. 9. Cockell, J. (1998). Peace-building and Human Security: Frameworks for International Response to Internal Conlicts. Paper presented at the Third Pan-European Interna- tional Relations Conference, Vienna. 10. Dennis, J.L. (November 26, 2014). Torture? “ERU Oficers Burn Me’’ Says Late Charles Julu’s Son As He Testiies In Mercenary Trial. In Proϔile Daily. Retrieved from http:// www.inproiledaily.com/?q=article/torture-%E2%80%9Ceru-oficers-burn-me-says- late-charles-julus-son-he-testiies-mercenary-trial. 11. Errante, A. (1999). Peace works as grief work in Mozambique and South Africa: post-conlict communities as context for child and youth socialization. Journal of Peace Psychology, 5, 261-279. 12. Green E.C., & Honwana, A. (1999). Indigenous healing of War-affected children in Africa. Washington: Knowledge and Learning Center Africa Region, World Bank. IK Notes, 10. 13. Honwana, A. (1996). Spiritual agency and self-renewal in southern Mozambique. Un- published Ph.D. thesis in social anthropology, University of London, SOAS.

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14. Honwana, A. (1997). Sealing the Past, Facing the Future: Trauma Healing in Mozam- bique. Accord no. 3, Special edition on the Mozambican peace process. London: Coali- tion Resources. 15. Honwana, A. (1999). Negotiating Post-War Identities: child soldiers in Mozambique and Angola. CODESRIA Bulletin, nos. 1&2, 4-13. 16. Human Rights Watch/Africa (1997). The Scars of Death: Children Abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. New York: Human Rights Watch. 17. Hutchinson, S.E. (1996), Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with Money, War and the State. Berke- ley: University of California Press. 18. Mani, R. (2002). Beyond Retribution: Seeking Justice in the Shadows of War. Cambridge: Polity Press. 19. Marrato, J. (1996, September). Superando os Efeitos Sociais da Guerra em Mocambique: mecanismos eestrategias locais. Paper presented at the fourth Congress of Lusophone Social Sciences, Rio de Janeiro. 20. Mbiti, J. (1969). African Religions and Philosophy. London: Heineman. 21. Osaghae, E.E. (2002). Crippled Giant: Nigeria since Independence. Ibadan: John Archers Publishers Limited. 22. Peace Direct (nd.). Child soldiers: the facts. Peace Direct. Retrieved from http://www. peacedirect.org/bring-the-children-back/child-soldiers-the-facts. 23. Stephen, E., (1999). The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War. London: Hurst & Company. 24. The EastAfrican. (2014, April 30). UN rights chief warns South Sudan leaders responsible if famine breaks out. The EastAfrican. Retrieved from http://www.theeas tafrican.co.ke/news/UN-rights-chief-warns-South-Sudan-leaders-famine-breaks- out/-/2558/2298884/-/xriuctz/-/index.html. 25. Tonkin, E. (2010). A Saucy Town? Regional Histories of Conlict, Collusion, And Com- merce in the Making of a Southeastern Liberian Polity. In J. Knorr & W.J. Filho (Eds.), The Powerful Presence of the Past. Integration and Conϔlict along the Upper Guinea Coast (pp. 101-136). Leiden: Brill. 26. UNICEF (2014, May 6). Central African Republic. Infographic: The Worst Crisis You’ve Never Heard Of. UNICEF. Retrieved from https://www.unicefusa.org/stories/central-african-republic-car-crisis-statistics. 27. Verhey, B. (2001). The prevention, demobilization and reintegration of child soldiers. Africa Region Working Paper Series, 23. 28. WesternVoices1 (2011, April 29). Liberia: The Cannibals War (Remember Liberians inherited an established AMERICAN MADE country). Retrieved from https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=QdhXNnsIB1w 29. Williamson, J., & Carter, L.R. (2005). Children’s Reintegration in Liberia. USAID. 30. Wratto, C. (2015, June 7). High School Project in Liberia. Retrieved from https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=9GWrr50Pqyk.

60 Issue 14, January 2016

Zambia: Mediation and the Transformation of the Lunda-Luvale Conϐlict

Ignatius KABALE MUKUNTO

Abstract. This article is an attempt to examine the intervention efforts in a conϔlict between the Lundas and Luvales in Zambia’s north-western region. The two ethnic groups on the eastern and western banks of the Zambezi River respectively have a longstanding ethnic acrimony since the 1950s. Based on the analysis of existing scholarly works and electronic media sources, the study, mainly desktop, looks at why transformative mediation is recommended than other forms of mediation. The article ϔinds that since 2009, the government of the republic of Zambia has made several attempts to try and resolve the Lunda-Luvale conϔlict but very little progress has been made. While there are several ofϔicial interventions, these are often top-down and problem-solving oriented. In October 2015, a special task committee constituted by Zambia’s Head of State is collecting data in the Lunda and Luvale areas of Northwestern Zambia with the aim to making recommendations for ‘resolving the conϔlict’. The study has also advanced cases for the appreciation of mediation through transformative lens, an approach that seeks to transform people and not just situations. Several intermediaries who can contribute to this transformation in the Lunda-Luvale conϔlict are suggested. Keywords: Ethnic Conϔlict, Transformative Mediation, Empowerment, Recognition.

Introduction The Lundas and Luvales are among the three main ethnic groups in Zambia’s north- western region with populations standing Ignatius KABALE MUKUNTO at 34.5% and 16.5% with Kaondes at 26.9% Lecturer respectively of the total regional population Department of Human Rights (Central Statistical Ofice, 2012). According Governance and Peacebuilding to the 2010 census, the North Western prov- Copperbelt University, Zambia ince has the smallest population: 706,462 E-mail: [email protected] (males 345,025; females 361,437), living in an area of 125,826 km2 and is the most Conlict Studies Quarterly sparsely populated (CSO, 2012). The Lunda Issue 14, January 2016, pp. 61-73 and Luvale ethnic groups on the eastern and western banks of Zambezi River have

61 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly historically been involved in one form of economic activity or the other. The Luvales have been ishermen as early as 1940, exporting tonnes of dried ish to the Copperbelt regions of Zambia. On the other hand, the Lundas, with no interest in ishing, opted for hunting and settled on the once game-rich forests on the eastern bank of the Zambezi (Papstein, 1989). Aside from clearly preferred economic activities, Papstein (1989) believes no social, political or structural element should push these two ethnic groups into conlict. Instead, they should relate as brothers and sisters. Alas, they have had a longstanding ethnic rancour since the 1950s. The latest case of conlict between the two groups was in early 2015, when the group’s two senior chiefs, Ishindi and Ndungu, differed over the use of Luvale and Lunda languages in schools under each other jurisdiction. This dispute not only brings to the fore an ethnically deep-rooted conlict, but facilitate third party interventions, a common occurrence in this decades-long conlict. The primary focus of this paper is to examine the type of interventions that has happened thus far and who have been the intermediaries. Further, have institutions such as the Council of Chiefs made any contribution to ameliorating the situation? And after an evaluation of the various interventions, the article proposes mediation as a more appropriate approach that would culminate into a true transformation of the conlict. The application of mediation allows for the clariication of issues between the parties and above all, helps cultivate an atmosphere that would eventually make it possible for non-adversarial encounters. However, before delving into this exploration, it’s impera- tive to unearth the historical grounds of the Lunda-Luvale conlict.

Historical Premises Beyond the language argument between the two senior chiefs, there are undoubtedly other issues that continue to remain bones of contention between the two ethnic groups. There are, for example, contextual, historical and relational factors that warrant examination. I contend that no discussion of ethnically related conlict is complete without particular reference to the role that colonialism and its perpetrators played in sowing the seeds of conlict. Commentators on ethnicity vis-à-vis conlicts and violence have highlighted its correlation with colonial actors or colonial practices (Ake, 1993; Blanton, Mason & Athow, 2001; Papstein, 1989). And, the Lunda-Luvale conlict is no exception. One would be deceived by the creation of the ‘Lunda and Luvale Native Authorities’ in the 1940s as structures that may have helped in ameliorating the differences between the two ethnic groups through dialogue. Regrettably, as Papstein (1989) notes, the two structural arrangements were without serious inluence in decision or policy making. It is noted that, while the architects of these structures viewed them as ‘institutions of modernization’, their inception encouraged or forced people to seek solutions to local problems through traditional tribal structures (Papstein, 1989, p. 384). Therefore, it

62 Issue 14, January 2016 is this entrenchment in tribal fall-backs that, I believe, has allowed the perpetuation of the Lunda-Luvale conlict until today. Undoubtedly, the [mis] handling of the political structures has had a decisive effect on relations between the two groups since time immemorial. Other commentators have claimed that “structural coniguration of ethnic groups has a direct and profound effect on the willingness and ability of groups to mobilize for collective action” (Blanton, Mason & Athow, 2001, p. 475). I have qualiied the Lunda-Luvale differences as ethnic, on the basis of Vanhanen (1999)’s proposition. He argues that ethnic groups can be perceived as extended kin groups where members of one group favour and support their group members rather than those from the other group in a conlict situation. As illustrated later, between the Lundas and Luvales there has been what Vanhanen calls support of one kin and not of a non-kin. The propensity for this support, argues Papstein (1989), is historical. Among the Lunda-Luvales, there was a change in perceptions: the village, lineage or clan were no longer the protectors and facilitators of access to land, ishing and hunting rights, healing, social recognition and economic advancement. This role was played by larger polities, such as chief and tribe. In his essay about the development tribalism between the Luvale and Lunda speaking people, Papstein (1989) reports that, within the realm of local politics, tribalism was so intensiied in the 1940s and 1950s to a point whereby a state of emergency had to be declared in Zambezi District. One aspect that merits emphasizing is that intensiied tribalism was solely driven by the Lundas and Luvales; colonial administrators, as was the case in other parts of Zambia, had an interest in indigenous structures. However, as Ake (1993) notes, their inluence was negative to the point of altering power relations within traditional power structures and among ethnic groups, triggering severe political competition. The Lunda-Luvale differences were not any different. The colonial state, according to Papstein (1989), encouraged the creation of tribal groups in rural settings, with the ultimate objective of utilizing these groups in urban industries. Aside from aiding local people’s with oficial legal recognition and access to economic opportunities in town, these alignments were a source of conlict, especially where colonial actors favoured one group against another, based on their presumed abilities. For example, colonial states invented such categories as the ‘clever Bemba or Lozi’ and the ‘backward and wild’ Luvale or Lamba’. Such classiication had (has) the potential to pit one ethnic group against another, especially in as far as political, social and economic opportunities mattered. This had nothing to do with the Lunda and Luvales before colonial contact. In other words, the subjugation that one group may have suffered at the hands of another had no precolonial roots. The systematic and large-scale enslavement of Lunda people by Luvale chiefs and the ‘big men’, notes Papstein (1989), was less an indication of some ancient ethnic animosity. It was rather an acknowledgement, in a new situation cre-

63 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly ated by merchant capitalists, of the abilities of the powerful over the powerless. This also culminated into what is called “cultural division of labour, a pattern of structural discrimination such that individuals are assigned to speciic types of occupations and other social roles on the basis of observable cultural traits or markers” (Blanton et al. 2001, p. 475). While this cultural division of labour may culminate into political mobilization and ultimately to social or political strife, other commentators think differently. Posner (2004), for example, argues that, “mere presence of cultural differences cannot possibly be a suficient condition for the emergence of political or social strife, for there are far more cultural cleavages in the world than there are conlicts” (p. 529). Conversely, some claim that Lundas and Luvales elsewhere in Zambia continue to co-exist and support each other during traditional ceremonies (Mupushi, 2010). Despite that, accentuated Lunda-Luvale cultural differences tend to keep the conlict active. A personal experience of the myth around the cultural division of labour revealed that people from North-Western part of Zambia, especially the ‘kaluvales and kalundas’ were favourably suited to do certain menial jobs. Papstein (1989) notes that the Lunda and Luvale were lowly identiied ethnically in town. This made it hard for them to ind jobs and served as a basis for more long-term social dificulties. At the time of Zambia’s independence, in 1964, while there were problems between the Lunda and Luvales, there were also issues between these two ethnic groups and other ethnically deined groups in terms of choices of positions within certain sectors of the economy (Papstein, 1989, p. 382). Latter differences have persisted, traversing political social and economic spheres. There have been calls, for example, to review boundaries between the two chiefdoms. In 2010, a High Court ruling decreed that the Zambezi River will be the boundary between the Lunda on the east and the Luvale on the west and ensuring all their activities fall with that boundary (Mupushi, 2010). Both senior chiefs Ndungu (of the Luvale) and Ishindi (of the Lunda) were directed to support the directive by advising their subjects to heed the Court ruling. Equally, there have been calls for an analysis of the location of social infrastructures such as schools in Zambezi District, east or west banks of the river. In sum, ethnic politics, according to Papstein (1989), became fully ledged in the late 1940s. They were helped by governments granting of schools in Luvale areas to teach in Luvale and schools in Lunda areas in Lunda – this resonates with the current differences. And by 1950, adds Papstein, the tension had permeated every facet of their lives, evident in such actions as Lundas boycotting Luvale traders. Additionally, travels in one another’s areas were a matter of serious insecurity. Therefore, the current differences between the two ethnic groups cannot be viewed narrowly as only being rooted in the use of either Lunda or Luvale languages, but as an intertwining of several aspects that demand consideration when conceiving third party intervention strategies. Hence, the

64 Issue 14, January 2016 rationale for exploring third party intervention approaches employed in the Lunda- Luvale conlict.

Third Party Intervention A third party may intervene in a conlict formally or informally and provide direction, assist in preventing the escalation of the conlict, and/or resolve substantive issues between the parties. Alternatively, a third party may aid the process of negotiation to allow parties to transform every facet of their conlict. Fisher (2001, p. ii) provides a more helpful description of third party intervention: … a typical response to destructive and persistent social conlict and comes in a number of different forms attended by a variety of issues. Mediation is a common form of intervention designed to facilitate a negotiated settlement on substantive issues between conlicting parties. Mediators are usually external to the parties and carry an identity, motives and competencies required to play a useful role in addressing the dispute. Lederach (2003) has, on the other hand, identiied four critical changes that a conlict engenders. These changes are personal, relational, structural and cultural. One of the key issues in third party intervention concerns the extent to which the approach employed creates space for the parties to decide and agree on how their conlict will be resolved or transformed. Further, how much attention is accorded to each of these four elements? Or are all these aspects collectively dealt with? As its pioneer and promoter, Lederach argues these four ‘legs’, collectively, give birth to conlict transformation. I will later delve into the implementation of these aspects. Stakeholders and participants in the Lunda-Luvale conlict have been open to third party intervention. Since 2009, the government of the republic of Zambia has made several attempts to try and resolve the conlict, but very little progress has been made. In 2010, one of the senior chiefs, Chief Ndungu of the Luvale people, implored the government to intervene in the conlict. The senior chief alleged then that governments silence was exacerbating the differences. There was an assurance from the government then that the conlict would be resolved (Mupushi, 2010). My contention is that third party intervention in the Lunda-Luvale conlict has been heavily tilted towards conlict resolution, which suggests dealing only with tangible aspects of the conlict, including access to land or location of social infrastructure like schools. In other words, appreciation of intangible factors such as respect, recognition and identity etc. is seemingly not taken into consideration. In the quest to ‘resolve’ the Lunda-Luvale’ conlict, several third party interventions have been used, and from a peace and conlict studies standpoint, these have covered essential conlict resolution approaches including adjudication, arbitration, negotiation, and mediation. As noted earlier, a case in point is the judicial approach to resolve part

65 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly of this conlict through High Court rulings regarding the boundary between the areas inhabited by the two ethnic groups. Further, as part of their efforts to contribute to ameliorating the situation, the Lunda Cultural Associations has made appeals for lasting peace between the two groups. Similarly in 2015, the Ministry of Chiefs and Traditional Affairs launched its own intervention by irst undertaking a baseline exercise to identify background information on the conlict from each of the two ethnic groups. A more recent intervention is being performed through a special committee tasked to engage, among others, the two senior chiefs, and all discussion are kept secret till a report is handed to the Republican President, later this year (Nyondo, 2015). However, the fact that this particular third party intervention is ‘top down’ and intervenors acknowledge that the Lunda-Luvale Conlict is historical may demand more than just interviewing a few select individuals. Through the work of the special committee and many other efforts conceived chiely to ‘resolve’ the conlict, the orientation in my view, is settlement or problem solving. As such, while efforts are noble, the interventions may not be transformative. Lederach (2003) aptly argues that conlict transformation views peace as embedded in the quality of relationships, face to face interactions and the manner in which social, political, economic and cultural relationships are structured. Different intermediary approaches have distinct effects on the conlict change and transformation. For example, a parliamentary committee on Education, Science and Technology that visited Zambezi District in 2013 reported that one of the senior chief representatives claimed the idea to use Lunda in the east and Luvale in the west was the best. However, government’s insisting on using both languages on both sides was unwelcome (Kalila, 2013). Thus, oficial intervention through government-appointed committee may not have positive outcomes as far as transforming relations between the two ethnic groups. At the risk of sounding pessimistic, ‘a pointed and exclusive’ focus may not yield favourable results depending on the breadth of participants and their respective constituencies. As Lederach (2003) advances, the attainment of peace hinges to a great extent on the relationships cultivated – socially, politically, economically and culturally. For example, if the oficial state interventions are politically inclined, then other aspects, supposedly given attention, may serve as triggers for new and future conlicts. As political aspects of the conlict are ‘resolved’, it is essential to pay particular attention to other aspects too. Zartman (2000, p. 255) conirms that “a perceived collective need that is denied is the basic condition for conlict”. He adds that the grievances cover a broad range, from freedom from political subjugation to economic deprivation immunity. Thus, if any of these often imperceptible elements are devoid of due consideration, transformation of the conlict may remain doubtful. Currently, in my view, no third party intervention is oriented towards transforming this conlict. Put differently, there is need to ensure that personal (interpersonal relations),

66 Issue 14, January 2016 relational, structural and cultural dimensions of the differences between the two ethnic groups are comprehensively handled. It sounds like a tall order, but the next section will postulate how this can be attained and especially who should respond to speciic angles of the whole transformation paradigm.

Transformation Of Lunda-Luvale Conϐlict While the common vocabulary is suggesting completely extinguishing the differences between the Lundas and Luvales, I propose the transformation of the conlict through the use of mediation. Mediation is one of the third party intervention approaches by an independent and acceptable participant to both disputing parties. It is deined as ‘an intervention of a third party in conlict who has limited (or no) authoritative decision making power; aimed at achieving mutually satisfactory outcome through reconciliation, empowerment healing, peace and justice and ultimately strengthening relationships, encouraging trust and respect between parties (Assefa, 2001; Moore, 2003; Jeong, 2010; Harper, 2006; Bannink, 2007). Despite the seemingly holistic and comprehensive description of mediation above, the approach advocated here is not just settlement or problem solving oriented but transformative. Transformative mediation, according to its proponents, is a third party intervention style that seeks to empower the parties in a conlict as well as encouraging them to recognize each other’s point of view (Folger & Barush Bush, 2014). It is also an intervention mechanism that aims to transform the relationship between the disputing parties. In the case of Lunda-Luvale conlict, the approach must be employed across all the four key players – the church; cultural associations; government ministries and the scholarly community. Mediating transformatively across these sectors would, I believe, comprehensively enhance the chances of transforming the conlict as opposed to leaving the intermediary role to state actors only. Besides, Lederach (2003) presents a fourfold change that a conlict begets and no one intervenor would unilaterally handle all these areas. First, at a personal level, the call is to reduce the destructive consequences and scale up the potential for individual growth physically, emotionally and spiritually. This dimension would be handled ably by the church leadership and counsellors. Second, relation- ally, transforming the Lunda-Luvale conlict, as Lederach, suggests, entails evaluating how the patterns of communication and interaction have been affected by the conlict. There is a need to go beyond visible issues (more the domain of conlict resolution) to underlying intangible aspects, as emphasized above. This can be handled, in addition to the church, by cultural associations and local and indigenous institutions. Structurally, conlict changes suggest that would be intervenors should assess social conditions that serve as triggers of conlict as well as the effects conlict has on existing structures and decision-making patterns. The government, through the Ministry of

67 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly

Chiefs and Traditional Affairs, should take up this responsibility and ensure any policy measures address this ailment. Last, cultural changes brought about by conlict call for, according to Lederach (2003), “helping those in conlict to understand the cultural patterns that contribute to conlict in their setting”. Thereafter, “identify, promote, and build on resources and mechanisms within that culture for constructively responding to and handling conlict” (p. 26). The synergies of the scholarly community and the Ministry of Chiefs and Traditional Affairs can assist in illing this void. However, the key question still remains: how transformative mediation can practically be realized by the four key players individually or collectively. First, the Church, through their various national, regional and local structures, enjoys national recognition and intervening in this conlict would equally be valued. It may be said, ethnic conlicts are internal matters in which mediation may be perceived as meddling (Zartman, 2000). But the churches, through their small Christian Communities, can and does have almost daily interactions with members of the Lunda and Luvale ethnic groups. As such, facilitating dialogue at this level between the two groups is in my view very feasible. I contend that the degree of cooperation by these groups is higher when drawn together by the church than when called by other social entities. Besides, the church’s involvement, through its leaders as mediators, will circumvent the limitation of the parties’ asymmetry (Kriesberg, 2001). As noted earlier, the lop- sidedness between the Lundas and Luvales is a familiar accusation and counter accusation. The church has comparatively more leverage, for example, to engage traditional leaders, such as headmen (custodians of tradition and order), to assess whether the continuing conlict is going against the traditional norms. Additionally, a mediator is expected “to block the impending or escalating conlict, drawing parties from hostile perceptions and actions and bring them together in a more harmonious relationship” (Zartman, 2001, p. 264). Leaders from churches can ably play this role. Second, cultural associations and local/indigenous associations, such as the Lunda and Luvale Cultural Associations, should equally be part of the transformation process. Members from these structures can participate in the mediation process at all the three levels – top, middle and lower. At the top or national level, they can represent their constituencies; serve as resources and participants at middle level during problem-solving workshops and facilitate village level inter-clan mediation processes. The latter may also include inter-ethnic engagements at the village level, ensuring representatives of these two ethnic groups are empowered to handle their differences amicably. This multi-layered contribution to the transformation of the conlict may not be unique to north-western region of Zambia, as mediation is described as both top-down and bottom-up. Mars (2001), looking at the Guyanese experience of Ethnic Politics, Mediation and Conlict Resolution, argues that the top-down part, a formal type of mediation, involves oficial entities such as states, international institutions

68 Issue 14, January 2016 and upper-class personalities, while the bottom-up mediation includes lower class or mass organizations, local communities, civil society elements and groups neglected in the political process. Third, the government has a bigger role in ensuring a lasting solution is found to the Lunda-Luvale conlict. As front runners, the Ministry of Chiefs and Traditional Affairs should, as part of their preliminary intervention in the conlict, proactively gain insight “into the underlying causes and social conditions which create and foster violent expression of conlict” (Lederach, 2003, p. 25). There is need to do away with the myth that lack of development is caused by ethnic strife and antagonism, a myth which discouraged the central government from investing in an area where the propensity for conlict is high and may hinder the success of any project (Papstein, 1989). An environment where both parties do not feel deprived of their social and economic needs should be created. Conversely, any disparities in the allocation of social infrastructure should transparently be explained to affected communities, thereby preventing claims of relative deprivation. As a source of conlict, relative deprivation is aptly described as resulting from “the combined effect of rising expectations and lack of progress toward demands for a better life. Relative deprivation is deined as actors’ perception of discrepancy between their value expectations and their value capabilities. Value expectations lead people to believe that they are rightfully entitled to certain goods and conditions of life” (Jeong, 2000, p. 69). Claims from the Lundas and Luvales are not devoid of claims of relative deprivations. For example, in 2010, there was a debate over who should have access to and control Zambezi Central Administration area, which is state land (Mupushi, 2010). Last, the scholarly community is another critical player in the transformation of the Lunda-Luvale conlict. One of the dilemmas of transformational view of conlict is how to develop a capacity for what Lederach (2003, p. 20) calls “constructive, direct, face to face interaction and at the same time, addressing systemic and structural changes”. The scholarly community is well poised to collaborate with government agencies and cultural associations to aid this capacity building. Through various scholarly interventions including research and publications, this particular community can serve as a valuable resource in the actualization of transformative mediation. Similarly, the Ministry of Chiefs and Traditional Affairs, the cultural associations or any special committee constituted by the state can utilize the expertise from the scholarly community to enhance the skill sets of their own constituencies. In addition, transformative mediation is anchored on a shift from destructive to constructive interaction between the parties. This implies a transformative effect on individuals and society due to its emphasis on empowerment and personal responsibility, rather than achieving a speciic outcome. It also aims to reduce the negative force of anger and hatred, which is always harmful and more often than not disrupts one’s ability to deal with diversity constructively. This according to Daly and Higgins (2011),

69 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly enables parties to cultivate a sense of compassion and responsibility. Thus, alongside the church leaders and leaders from cultural associations, the scholarly community has the technical acumen to bring this sort of mediation to the fore, to a point where the other stakeholders beneit from such input. All things considered, involving all four key players in the transformation of the Lunda- Luvale conlict means that the style of mediation advocated is ‘party centred. Arguably, no big powers, say the government, can impose an agreement or outcome. The parties should willingly engage in negotiations and formulate their own boundaries for any agreement (Kriesberg, 2001). In Kriesberg’s view, no single mediation method is completely adequate; a combination of approaches is necessary, either simultaneously or sequentially. Similarly, several intermediaries, operating at different levels, are necessary. This, adds Kriesberg, assists in ensuring that peace-making is not just top-down, but also bottom-up. As such, the transformation of the Lunda-Luvale Conlict in North-western Zambia must be multidimensional and multisectoral. This is the core thesis of this paper.

Cost of Failed Transformation It is asserted that, “the process of mediation needs to address the parties’ grievances, both substantive and procedural, in an effort to identify dificult compromises and compensations. Once that is done, it must focus on setting up mechanisms for handling future grievances that may arise” (Zartman, 2000, p. 264). Thus, if the Lunda-Luvale conlict is partially transformed or not at all, there are in my view, consequences of this outcome which I call opportunity costs. And there are sections of society that may ultimately end up bearing the greatest brunt. The opportunity costs that can be envisaged are fourfold, polarized community relations; disruption of social infrastructure development; the spillover effect; and possibility of future violent engagement. The failure to transform the current conlict between the Lunda and Luvales has the potential to further polarize relations between the two communities and to take on a destructive path. This will, in turn, contribute to the crystallization of ethnic divisions and stratiications, which would make co-existence harder and could lead to the erosion of the traditional bonds of community. It will sadly reinforce the disruption of institutions of social control and social organization that have evolved over centuries, but were transformed by colonial administrators. Papstein (1989) has noted the negative effects of ethnic or tribal differences between the Lundas and Luvale. He claims they “face the dilemma of wanting to know and be proud of their local history, and to show both to succeeding generations and to the world at large how they have evolved as a society” (p. 389). Thus, a breakdown in the mediation process and transformation of the conlict will in a way heighten this dilemma. Second, failed transformation will have a bearing on social infrastructure development. In 2010, a government minister’s appeal for the ‘resolution of the Lunda-Luvale conlict’

70 Issue 14, January 2016 greatly hinged on the need to avoid derailing developmental projects in the region. Historically, the same concern has been raised, as one authority notes that “the major locally perceived reason why the issue [conlict] must be settled is that this would be a irst step toward economic development” (Papstein, 1989, p. 387). This development that would lead to better schools and medical services and the creation of an infrastructure which would allow local farmers and ishermen greater participation in the national economy (ibid). In the same direction, others have argued that “… ethnic communities may remain passive and unmobilized for long periods. The salience of group identity is awakened by socially derived inequalities in material well-being or political access. Racial or ethnic distinctions are deepened by the denial of political participation as well as a lack of physical and economic security (Jeong, 2000, p. 72). Third, the failure to transform the Lunda-Luvale conlict has a spill-over effect to other cities and towns inhabited by members of the two ethnic groups. As noted above, a government minister claimed that the conlict between the two ethnic groups has the potential to degenerate into a national conlict. Even if inter-ethnic conlicts are seemingly local, they can swiftly gain national character, either politically or socially, due to national interest from citizens sharing the same ethnic identity. And I contend that the core threat to peace may not be so much from animosities between primary ethnic groups, but more from proxies in urban cities. When these proxies make available inancial, material and political assistance to players involved in the local struggles, ethnic conlicts invariably escalate. Therefore, the need to transform the conlict at the local level is evident. Last, there is potential for future violent confrontation if the Lunda-Luvale conlict is not transformed. The failure to transform the conlict now can potentially slip into serious future violent engagements. Lederach (1992) observes that differences over speciic problems get translated into accusations against the other party and inferences about their character, intentions and motives. Instead of focusing on the problem between them, parties view the other party as the problem. This degree of escalation is often attributed to poor or destructive communication or interaction. As one scholar argues: … communication and interaction are necessary ingredients in any attempt to end conlict and prevent its future occurrences. Left to themselves, ethnic communities are bound to retreat into their own myths and histories, develop and exclusivist creed, and be quick to take umbrage at any perceived slight. Hence, dialogue cannot be permitted to cease (Zartman, 2000, p. 265). A key lesson from Zartman’s observations is that third party intervention efforts, particularly mediation initiatives, in north-western Zambia between the Lundas and Luvales should not cease. As argued earlier, the failure to transform the conlict now or in the future will be a severe blow to the quest to quell any possible eruption of violent conlict.

71 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly

Additionally, transformation of this conlict has both social and economic development dividends for the region and the country as a whole.

Conclusion What I have attempted to discuss in this essay is irst, my argument that the issues in the Lunda-Luvale conlict are not just contemporary but historical. Second, the handling of the conlict by the different players should be less inclined to mediate the substantive issues in the conlict and instead lean towards transforming relations between the parties. Not only is conlict transformation linked to relational dimensions of the conlict, but also to personal, structural and cultural dimensions. Fundamentally, attention should be paid to the changes that the conlict provokes. To comprehensively transform the conlict and respond to its various dimensions, a myriad of key stakeholders should play the intermediary role. These include the church leaders; cultural associations and indigenous organizations; government agencies - ministry of chiefs and traditional affairs - and the scholarly committee. It is undoubtedly clear that there are costs to the failure to transform the Lunda-Luvale conlict. These include polarizing relations; slowing down the development of social infrastructure; spill over effect onto other cities and towns and potential for future violent engagement.

References 1. Ake, C. (1993). What is the Problem of Ethnicity in Africa? Transformation, 22. 2. Assefa, H. (2001), Reconciliation. In L. Reychler & T. Paffenholz (Eds.), Peacebuilding: A Field Guide (pp. 336-342). Boulder, Co: Lynne Rienner. 3. Blanton, R., Mason, T.D., & Athow, B. (2001). Colonial Style and Post-Colonial Conlict in Africa. Journal of Peace Research, 38 (4), 473-491. 4. Bannink, F. (2007). Solution-Focused Mediation: The Future with a Difference. Conϔlict Resolution Quarterly, 25 (2). 5. Central Statistical Ofice. (2012). Census of Population and Housing: National Analyti- cal Report. Central Statistical Ofϔice Zambia. 6. Daly, B., & Higgins, N. (2011). International Peace Mediation through a Legal Lens. ADRJ, 238. 7. Fisher, R. (2001). Methods of Third Party Intervention. Berlin: Berghof Foundation. 8. Folger, J., & Barush Bush, R.A. (2014), Transformative Mediation, 2 (62). Retrieved from http://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1700&context =faculty_scholarship. 9. Harper, C. (2006). Mediators as Peacemakers: The Case for Activist Transformative- Narrative Mediation, Journal of Dispute Resolution, 2 (10). 10. Jeong, H. (2000). Peace and Conϔlict Studies: An Introduction. Aldershot: Ashagate. 11. Jeong, H. (2010). Conϔlict Management and Resolution: An Introduction. London: Rout- ledge.

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12. Kalila, C.K. (2014). Report of the Committee on Education, Science and Technology for the Third Session of the Eleventh National Assembly, Appointed on 26th September, 2013. 13. Kriesberg, L. (2001). Mediation and the Transformation of the Israeli-Palestinian Con- lict. Journal of Peace Research, 38 (3), 373-392. 14. Lederach, J.P. (1992). Understanding Conlict: Experience, Structure and Dynamics, Conciliation Quarterly, 6 (3). 15. Lederach, J.P. (2003). The Little Book of Conϔlict Transformation. Intercourse, PA: Good Books. 16. Mars, P. (2001). Ethnic Politics, Mediation, and Conlict Resolution: The Guyana Experi- ence. Journal of Peace Research, 38 (3), 353-372. 17. Moore, C. (2003). The Mediation Process. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 18. Mupushi, S. (2010, September). Rupiah Denounces Lunda-Luvale Rows as Petty, Old- Fashioned. The Post. Retrieved from http://www.postzambia.com/post-read_article. php?articleId=13709. 19. Nyondo, L. (2015, September). Luvale, Lunda Differences will be resolved, Says Chiefs PS. The Zambia Daily Mail. Retrieved from https://www.daily-mail.co.zm/?p=42958. 20. Papstein, R. (1989). From Ethnic Identity to Tribalism: The Upper Zambezi Region of Zambia, 1830–1981. In L. Vail (Ed.), Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (372-394). Oxford: James Curry. 21. Posner, D.N. (2004). The Political Salience of Cultural Difference: Why Chewas and Tumbukas are Allies in Zambia and Adversaries in Malawi. American Political Science Review, 98 (4), 529-545. 22. Vanhanen, T. (1999). Domestic Ethnic Conlict and Ethnic Nepotism: A Comparative Analysis. Journal of Peace Research, 36 (1), 55-73. 23. Zartman, I.W. (2000). Ethnic Conlicts: Mediating Conlicts of Need, Greed and Creed. Orbis, 44 (2), 255-266.

73 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly

Northern Ireland: Religion and Transitional Justice

John D. BREWER David MITCHELL Gerard LEAVEY

Abstract. The right to practice religion is recognised as one of the universal liberties transitional justice interventions are designed to defend, and religion is often mentioned as one of the cultural factors that impact on local transitional justice practices from below. Many human rights cases of abuse, however, are motivated by religious extremism and the association of religion with conϔlict has largely a discouraged reϔlection on its positive contribution to transitional justice. This ϔield is undeveloped and the little work that elaborates its positive role is descriptive. This paper theorises the relationship between religion and transitional John D. BREWER justice and develops a model for understanding its Professor of Post Conlict Studies potential role that better allows an assessment of Institute for the Study of Conlict its strengths and weaknesses. The model is applied Transformation and Social Justice to original research conducted on ex-combatants in Northern Ireland, and concludes that only in Queen’s University, Belfast very limited circumstances can religious actors E-mail: [email protected] make a telling contribution to transitional justice. David MITCHELL Understanding what these circumstances are is the purpose of the model developed here. Assistant Professor in Conlict Resolution and Reconciliation Keywords: Religion, Northern Ireland, Local Trinity College, Dublin Transitional Justice, Ex-combatants. E-mail: [email protected] Gerard LEAVEY Professor of Mental Health and Introduction Wellbeing, University of Ulster Transitional justice is an interdiscipli- E-mail: [email protected] nary ield. It has expanded its focus from Conlict Studies Quarterly the criminal processing of conlict-related Issue 14, January 2016, pp. 74-91 crimes to the management of change after conlict and now shares its concerns with

74 Issue 14, January 2016 disciplines like theology, religious studies and moral philosophy. Religious perspectives are posing a serious challenge to the human rights tradition that normally validates transitional justice studies, for religion can be one of the principal causes of the very conlicts transitional societies are recovering from and religious extremism poses one of the most serious threats to human rights. However, the relationship between religion and human rights is ambivalent. While most world religions have been active in struggles for universal human rights, they have also supported violence and repression. It is for reasons of such ambivalence that transitional justice scholars tend to ignore the contribution of religion as a resource in transitional justice practice and interventions, which explains why religion, when it intrudes in the intellectual ield, does so in limited ways. This paper irst reviews some of the forms in which religion enters transitional justice studies. It locates this literature within broader intellectual currents that are themselves structurally determined by changes in that ield. It discusses some of the limitations in this literature, the most signiicant of which is its inadequate conceptual mapping. This is used as the starting point for the formulation of a theoretical model which is proposed as one way to conceptualise the contribution of religion to transitional justice, drawing attention also the limitations of religion in the transitional justice ield. The model is applied to Northern Ireland as a case study, based on a study of religion and ex-combatants. In the next section, the paper addresses the highly constrained ways in which religion enters transitional justice studies.

The discovery of religion There are two forms in which religion has penetrated transitional justice studies, which we call the neutral and the programmatic approaches. In the former, religion is inci- dental; in the latter it is fundamental. The neutral version comes in two types, referred to here as passive and active. Dealing with its passive type irst, the chief hallmark is that religion is coincidental to transitional justice, a random feature of the external environment that transitional justice practitioners have to negotiate in developing local interventions and practices. Universal declarations of people’s human right always mention the importance of the liberty to practice religious rights, although transitional societies often ind this right threatened or dificult to re-establish in the process of change see (Anderson, 2003). In practising this right, of course, transitional justice researchers recognise that religion is one of the contextual factors that affect local transitional justice interventions, sometimes facilitating, sometimes inhibiting bottom-up transitional justice. It does so, however, with no special status beside the whole array of other cultural processes that impinge on local transitional justice practices, such as gender, politics, history, and the like. Good examples are bottom-up transitional justice in Afghanistan (see Rubin, 2003), Sierra Leone (see Millar, 2010, 2011a, 2011b), Uganda (see Jackson, 2009), and Nepal

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(see Robins, 2012), amongst others. Interestingly, religion has not been identiied as a contextual factor explicitly structuring bottom-up transitional justice in Northern Ireland, where Lundy’s work has almost pioneered the idea of local transitional practices (for example, 2011). In work such as this, religion is passive, one part of the environment that transitional justice practices have to negotiate, giving no meaning to these practices. In other studies of transitional justice, religion is an active process that does affect the goals of the intervention and practice, sometimes to advantage, sometimes for ill. For example, Igreja (2012) has documented the positive role of indigenous religious tradi- tions in healing practices in post-conlict Mozambique. On the other hand, Boesenecker and Vinjanmuri (2011; also see Vinjanmuri and Boesenecker, 2009) have shown how in the mediation of international human rights norms, some faith-based NGOs can lose sight of them in their translation to local circumstances, and others promote them. The contribution of religion to truth recovery has been widely used to illustrate the active role of religion and studies have shown its unevenness. Wilson’s (2001, p. 134) account of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, for example, points to the constructive role played by religious actors, arguing that religious groups and the churches in the Vaal region were the only local organisations explicitly working with the Commission towards the goal of reconciliation. To Brudholm (2008), however, the religious ethos given to the evidential process by the Chair, Archbishop Tutu, constrained victims’ expressions of righteous anger, claiming that most felt themselves to be under a religious obligation to express forgiveness and purposely shoe-horned into doing so, by the way, their testimony was elicited, often through impromptu interventions by the Chair in requesting it. Both views can be right at the same time because of the markedly different form that the religious interventions took, which only highlights the importance of conceptual mapping when identifying the role religion plays in transitional justice. However, to this neutral approach must be added another, which we call the programmatic approach. The programmatic approach is partisan when championing the positive contribution of religion to transitional justice and much more systematic in identifying the range of interventions and practices it can inluence for the good. It is this approach that we wish to emphasise, for it relects some fundamental realignments in the intellectual ield that are themselves explicable by structural shifts in the conditions that produce these ideas. There is a growing international literature on the positive role of religion in transitional justice that suits its characterisation as programmatic and agenda-setting. It its, however, within a much broader intellectual shift, the emergence of a wider ield called religious peacebuilding. The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) is perhaps the intellectual leader of this trend, producing from its religion and peacebuilding research programme, which began in the late 1990s, a body of literature (as an example

76 Issue 14, January 2016 see the work of David Smock, 2001, 2002, 2006, 2008). This has been referred to by various names, ‘religious peacebuilding’, ‘religious conlict transformation’, ‘religious conlict resolution’ and ‘faith-based diplomacy’ (see Coward and Smith, 2004; Shore, 2009; Schlack, 2009). This work endorses the earlier arguments of Johnston (2003) on faith-based interventions in conlict, suggesting that religion can be a particularly signiicant factor in peace when one of more parties to the conlict has strong religious identities and when religious leaders come from all sides of the dispute. In earlier work Smock (2001) listed several key roles for faith-based NGOs in peace processes, amongst them train- ing, mediation, conlict prevention, dialogue, and reconciliation. While this work has been criticised for its optimism, much of the challenge is designed to improve rather than impugn the idea of religious peacebuilding. Brewer, Higgins and Teeney (2010, pp. 1019-37; also 2011), for example, dispute that these claims apply where religion is involved in the contestation or elides with ethnicity, ‘race’ and structural cleavages, when churches take sides and associate with speciic parties to the conlict and form part of regressive civil society, or where churches and para-church organisations uphold failed or failing states, but they nonetheless use these criticisms to try to advance the theorisation of religious peacebuilding. The initial impetus to this literature came from North America, although there are some notable exceptions to US dominance of the ield. Shore (2009), for example, addresses South Africa, Brewer, Higgins and Teeney Northern Ireland (2011), and Durward and Marsden (2009) collated a series of talks given in November 2007 at the UK Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst on ‘engaging with religion for building peace’. But it is no coincidence that the stimulus to religious interventions in peacebuilding came from the cultural and political space of North America, for it is a post-Cold War phenomenon. The interest in the USA in religious peacebuilding is associated with the ‘end of history’ arguments that emerged at the fall of communism, and are about the universalisation of Western democracy as the inal form of government. Religion, however, was drawn on as a resource for other reasons than the particular personal religious beliefs of neo- conservatives who advanced these claims to hegemony. There is a plurality of religions in the USA as part of its racial and ethnic mix, and the country has never witnessed religious or holy war and thus has no historical memory of religious hatred and violence of the kind that negatively affects the idea of public religion in most of Europe. Its separation of church and state ensures no one religion has become the established faith and accorded privileged political status as a result. It is also a society where religious practice remains high, against the trend toward secularisation elsewhere in the West, which encourages the US to take religion seriously. What is more, the increasing importance of religion in post-Cold War conlicts, most notably in the Balkans but also more widely in the emergence of militant Islam, began to

77 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly affect US foreign and domestic policy interests in the late 1990s to the point where the focus on religion as a site for reconciliation became the reverse face of the attention on religion as a site of contestation. This is captured wonderfully in the title of a pioneering text in this genre by Scott Appleby (2000) when he referred at the beginning of the new millennium to The Ambivalence of the Sacred, its capacity for peacemaking within the midst of its warmongering. The language used by advocates of religious peacebuilding mirrored that of the religious extremists they wished to counter, referring to ‘religious militants for peace’ (see, for example, Appleby, 1998). Religious peacebuilding thus became part of the US interest in procuring global political stability. The repositioning of research focus to address this need has been dramatic. The USIP is not alone in establishing a research programme on religious peacebuilding; so did the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The US Institute for Global Engagement established a ‘religion and security’ initiative in 2003 designed to explore the intersection between religion and political stability, and Harvard University a ‘religion in global politics’ project. The American University in Washington DC, for example, has a large research programme funded by the Henry Luce Foundation on religious responses to violence; the same funder had earlier inanced a seven-country study of grassroots religious peacebuilding lead by a team from Maryknoll Seminary in New York State (see Cejka and Bamat, 2003). New journals began to appear, such as The Review of Faith and International Affairs in 2002, and research centres and institutes sprang up to capture the zeitgeist, whose personnel have published many of the leading texts. Three can be mentioned for illustration. The Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conlict Resolution at George Mason University in Washington DC, is run by Marc Gopin, an expert on the role that religion and culture play in conlicts and conlict resolution, particularly in the Middle East (for a selection of Gopin’s work see Gopin, 2000, 2002, 2012). The International Peace and Conlict Reconciliation Program at the American University in Washington DC is led by Professor Mohammed Abu-Nimer, an international expert on interfaith dialogue and Muslim contributions to conlict resolution (for example, Abu-Nimer, 2003, Abu-Nimer and Augsburger, 2009). The Yale Center for Faith and Culture is directed by Professor Miroslav Volf, Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and author of several pioneering works on faith and the problems of reconciliation following mass violence, especially in the Balkans (see Volf, 1996, 2006). It is no coincidence therefore that personal religiosity and professional practice elide in some of the most well-known contributors, as their private faith motivates their research agenda. Some of these major texts are thus written from a standpoint of deep religious belief. One of the irst discussions of ‘political forgiveness’ was written by a theologian (Shriver, 2009; also see Torrance, 2006; Volf, 2006), and some of the social science attempts to debate forgiveness are written from a Christian perspective (Amstutz, 2004), or use speciic scriptural texts to lesh out the meaning of political forgiveness (Satha-Anand, 2002).

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For the purposes of this paper it is signiicant that a further realignment in the intellectual landscape arose when religious peacebuilding was extended to an interest in religious contributions to transitional justice, and time has been spent in locating this trend in the emergence of the wider ield of religious peacebuilding so that its cultural and political milieu can be understood. To relect this shift, the US Social Science Research Council formed a working group on religion, reconciliation and transitional justice, and the famous Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame University a restorative justice, reconciliation and peacebuilding initiative. There are many ways in which this new trend in transitional justice studies is manifest: work on the religious roots to restorative justice (for example, Hadley, 2001; Philpott, 2012), attention to the contribution of religion to truth recovery and memory (for example, Hayes and Tombs, 2001), its role in managing the aftermath of violence and mass atrocity (Brudholm and Cushman, 2009), as well as many works of advocacy, the best example of which is the pioneering writings of Daniel Philpott, who is a political scientist based in Notre Dame (for a selection see Philpott, 2006, 2007a, 2007b, 2009, 2012). We call this the programmatic approach because of its advocacy. The thrust to the approach is that religion places a natural value on reconciliation, encourages its outwork- ing in ways that form the crux of transitional justice practices, like apology, forgiveness, and empathy toward former enemies, and, in respecting justice, religion helps societies emerging out of conlict with the recovery of truth and the management of divided memories. Philpott, as the best representative of the approach, describes with evidence from around the globe just what important inluence religion can have; and the examples are drawn from all the world religions (for example, Philpott, 2007a, pp. 184-187). For all this effort, however, there is no theorisation of the relationship or any conceptual mapping that elaborates on the relationship so that we might understand what it is about religion that makes it useful in the transitional justice ield. With the exception of the observation that religion has its greatest effect in transitional justice only when institutionally autonomous from the state, we do not told how religion works to this end. Advocacy, of course, tends to be like that. In what follows an attempt is made to conceptualise the relationship in such a way as to make it clear what it is about religion that can sometimes lend it great import in transitional justice, and sometimes not, enabling us to see when its role might be championed or avoided. We are, in the terms of this paper, being programmatic but with reservations, and suggest that like the neutral approach the programmatic one comes in two forms, an optimistic and a realist version.

A realist model for understanding religion and transitional justice To begin to understand the role of religion in transitional justice we need to distinguish two aspects to the relationship. The role of religion in transitional justice varies by the kind of religious input and the type of transitional justice intervention. We can distinguish these briely as the foundation blocks to our model.

79 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly

In terms of religious input, this can vary signiicantly. One way to distinguish religious inputs is to differentiate in terms of religious values, doctrine, organisation and personnel. Religious input can thus involve merely the use of vague religious principles and rhetoric as mobilisation and legitimation strategies. Examples of this are the idea of Christian ‘love’ used as a pillar for reconciliation between victim and perpetrator (notably Ure, 2008), search for the spiritual roots to restorative justice or the use of Christian values to motivate truth recovery (notably Archbishop Tutu’s Christian approach to his chairing of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission). The various activities of religious and faith-based NGOs, churches and para-church organisations in peacebuilding and reconciliation constitute one of the more obvious forms of religious input, emphasised strongly in Smock’s special report on faith-based NGOs (2001). Input can also be more individualised, simply referring to the activities of key religious personnel, acting as particular role models of reconciliation, forgiveness or hope, a number of which are collated by Little (2007) and Gopin (2012), or when acting in concert as a signiicant collective group, as emphasised in Brewer, Higgins and Teeney’s analysis of key church igures in Northern Ireland’s peace process (2011). Another form of religious input is inter-faith dialogue to assist in relations between the three Abrahamic faiths, where various forms of doctrine in each are explored for their common Abrahamic core as the basis for dialogue. Some of these forms of religious input utilise the special expertise of religious actors, or are exclusively religious in content, but others put religious actors and resources as only one amongst many secular possibilities, to be used as best it the requirements. In this latter regard, religious inputs can compete with secular ones – religious and faith – based NGOs with human rights groups, women’s groups and the rest, and religious values and doctrine can compete with moral frameworks that are secular. In some inputs therefore we see religion working to its strengths, in areas where there is relevance, expertise, useful contacts, powerful leverage and experience, in others it confuses and confounds the problem, perhaps with religious actors and NGOs simply getting in the way as well-meaning but naive amateurs. This suggests that religious inputs need to be carefully and strategically planned to see where they can best make a difference, rather than just thrown in regardless out of wish for religious actors to be seen to do something. Where religious inputs are appropriately placed, it follows there should be no hostility from competing contributors to the intrusion of religion. The key problems around religious inputs are therefore twofold: determining which religious inputs are most appropriate; and, where thought to be so, trying to persuade the competing contributors not to go-it-alone but to develop fruitful collaboration between religious and non-religious inputs. Distinguishing between kinds of religious input is not the only way to unpack the relationship between religion and transitional justice, the other is by the kind of transitional

80 Issue 14, January 2016 justice intervention in which religion gets involved. Interventions vary, such as truth recovery, managing the past, new forms of memory work, assisting in the social reintegration of ex-combatants, work with victims and the like, reparations and so on. We might refer to these as ways of transitional justice intervention. In one sense religion might be thought of as a synthesising and encompassing ‘sacred canopy’ hanging over all of society, competent to work in every ield of transitional justice, from peacemaking to prisoners. The programmatic and pioneering ambitions of Philpott veer toward this position. He sees a very broad role for religion in transitional justice, mentioning reconciliation, forgiveness, truth commissions, trials, reparations, apologies, trauma relief, conlict resolution and peacebuilding (see especially, Philpott, 2007a). However, the notion that religion is a sacred canopy with the competence to intervene in all walks of life is not a view that can be sustained in late modernity. Brewer’s approach to the role of religion in transitional justice, for example, is more circumspect, seeing particular areas of the social peace process where religion is better suited than others, particularly in respect to truth recovery (see Brewer, 2010, p. 60) and work with prisoners (see for example, Brewer, Higgins and Teeney, 2011, pp. 64-67). The role of the churches in ‘local’ bottom-up truth recovery processes, for example, is especially noteworthy as alternatives to state-led, top-down processes, which are often in the control of the former regime, as occurred frequently in Latin America (see, for example, Rios, 2015). This happened, of course, precisely in societies where the Catholic Church was the dominant and largest civil society group, and the only civil society group with the authority, legitimacy and relative political safety to conduct rival truth recovery procedures in opposition to the state. Religion was not an input into truth recovery in Argentina or Rwanda (as noted by Philpott, 2007a, pp. 104-105). In the latter case this is because religious actors were eager participants in the slaughter, leaving the churches and religious-based NGOs with no credibility in calling for truth recovery afterwards and much to hide from any truth recovery process. The context to the intervention is therefore critical to the feasibility of a religious input in particular modes of intervention; and clearly, in addition to its obvious social structural dimensions, ‘context’ here includes the nature and history of the conlict itself. This brief discussion suggests three variables are critical to understanding the potential contribution of religion to transitional justice – the type of religious input, the mode of intervention, and the context to the relationship, as represented in Figure 1. This conceptual mapping implies that religion has a role in transitional justice when – and only when – the relevant types of input can be distinguished, the appropriate forms of input identiied and the best modes of intervention speciied, for the context in which it is occurring. This schema suggests there will be contexts in which religious inputs ought to occur when they currently do not, and contexts where the input is inappropri- ate or ought not to occur at all. Even enthusiasts who adopt what we call the optimistic

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Intervention

Input Context

Figure 1: Religion and transitional justice programmatic approach, where religious inputs are thought feasible in all modes of transitional justice and in all contexts, still ought to have the realism to caution religious actors to garner the information to understand which kind of religious input is needed, and what is the best mode of intervention to make for the speciic context if it is not to backire or prove counterproductive. In the section that follows, we apply the model to a particular case, ex-combatants in Northern Ireland’s conlict, in which the conceptual distinction between input, intervention and context is used to advocate the more realist approach to religious contributions to transitional justice. It offers a counterweight to unbridled optimism, emphasising the strengths and weaknesses of religion.

Applying the model to religion and transitional justice in Northern Ireland This conceptual map helps us understand the strengths and weaknesses of the role of religion in transitional justice in Northern Ireland and provides the means by which we can evaluate its relevance to ex-combatants’ transition to non-violence. The schema suggests the need to have the most effective balance between input and intervention for the context at hand. Dealing irst with context, at irst sight, it might look as if the context in Northern Ireland rules out religion playing any role in transitional justice. The nature and history of the conlict gave it a religious hue as a result of the ethno-religious boundary markers of the groups involved, even though the substance of the conlict was thoroughly political. Wider social structural conditions ensured the survival of ancient colonial divisions, reproducing two cultural and political identities that encouraged and reinforced separation and separateness between the religious groups through forms of social distance, residential and educational segregation and political conlict. The context therefore made religion part of the problem, making it dificult for it to be seen as part of the solution.

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This was not improved by the actions of the institutional churches themselves, which compounded the dificulties of the context. The inability of the institutional church to become involved in the peace process in active and overt ways, outside weak inputs like ritualised forms of condemnation of the violence, earned the institutional church no legitimacy that might by popular acclaim and political pressure pull the institutional church into intervening in the post-conlict public arena to lead debates about transitional justice issues around human rights, truth recovery, victimhood, forgiveness, hope, memory, righteous anger, victims and the like. Faith-based interventions were made by religious independents, mavericks and individuals working outside the institutional churches in religious orders and para-church organisations. Individuals from the mainstream churches gravitated to spaces of religious peacebuilding that were outside the control of conservative church hierarchies. Their inputs were limited by the lack of oficial status and authority that marked the interventions. This constrained religious actors in their interventions, resulting in an almost exclusive focus on reconciliation work to improve relations between individual Catholics and Protestants. Reconciliation work is commendable. It offered a bright light in the midst of the darkness of barbarous violence. But this form of intervention prevented religious actors from dealing with other key issues in the transition from conlict to peace. Philpott (2007a, pp. 104-105), for example, notes the peculiarity of Northern Ireland for the failure of the churches to push for truth recovery processes. There is no lobby by them in the public sphere for a truth recovery process, and no involvement of the institutional church or religious actors in the community-led local processes set up as an alternative. Philpott explains this by the resistance of the British state to establish a formal process, although there was religious involvement in the government’s Consultative Group on the Past (but its report, ironically, has slipped from history). This does not, however, absolve the institutional churches or individual religious actors from undertaking or pushing for community-led and local based truth recovery projects in combination with human rights groups and lobbyists. In fact, there is no intervention by religious actors, faith-based NGOs, para-church groups, or the institutional church in any of the arenas which demarcate transitional justice studies. The context might be said to rule it out. Ambivalent about overt involvement in the political conlict, the institutional churches do not know how to intervene in the peace process. The religious hue to the conlict made them withdraw from the public sphere to avoid making matters worse, so they restricted themselves to the one input they felt this religious colouring made relevant – reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants – completely overlooking the social structural conditions that made these relations abnormal in the irst place. This even included a failure to input into the social gospel in working class neighbourhoods where violence was embedded. This kind of context makes religious contributions to transitional justice very dificult, but there is no reason why it should have ruled rule it out altogether. This brings us to the

83 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly former combatants in Northern Ireland. They are important to the wider literature on religion and transitional justice because this was the one arena where religion was heavily involved in Northern Ireland’s peace process.

Religion and ex-combatants The human rights tradition of transitional justice studies in Northern Ireland completely overlooks religion in its consideration of ex-combatants (see for example Shirlow, Tonge, McAuley and McGlynn, 2010). But advocates of the contribution of religion to transitional justice neglect it too. The judgement by Philpott (2007a, pp. 195-196) that Northern Ireland is a contrary case to the litany of places he lists as evidencing positive contributions, can only be sustained by neglecting the churches’ work with prisoners, their families and ex-combatants in Northern Ireland. This is an input especially relevant to the calling of religious actors because of the biblical injunctions within Christianity to pastor to prisoners. And it is an arena for intervention which is easily able to exploit the expertise, contacts and familiarity garnered for religious actors through the system of prison chaplains, prison services and religious literature available inside, as well as the accessibility of jail inmates to religious actors and prisoners’ potential receptivity to religious contemplation and relection. Finally, the context – one of prolonged and bitter armed struggle – made this kind of input and intervention highly relevant for peace, since the imprimatur of ex-combatants and prisoners is critical to any deal and their own personal transformation from violence to peace is a measure of the likely success in negotiating one. In this regard, the religious independents, mavericks and faith-based NGOs and para- church groups were very good in terms of contributing to transitional justice. The inputs took many forms, ranging from establishing dialogue with the paramilitary groups, acting as back channels for communication between the paramilitary groups and a host of other parties interested in ending the violence (other religious groups, political parties, government ministers, even with the secret service), facilitating political discussions between politicians and the political leaders of paramilitary groups to draw them away from an exclusively military strategy, hosting debates about political blueprints and running between interlocutors testing out various formulations of the wording, meeting with political prisoners and combatants inside the jails, assisting their families on the outside, and simple pastoral work in which they put themselves alongside prisoners and paramilitaries alike. Some of these inputs were very effective indeed, especially back channel dialogue, but if we restrict ourselves to ex-combatants, the effectiveness of the interventions they made was constrained by the context of armed struggle. This context was an enablement to their inputs but a constraint on the effectiveness of the interventions. While there was every prospect for a signiicant input for religion in transitional justice interventions

84 Issue 14, January 2016 with ex-combatants, this did not happen. Let us irst show see why the potential for religious input was so high. The context was an enablement to religious inputs in that Northern Ireland is peculiar in having a strong religious content to processes of cultural and political identity formation, ensuring that, personal faith or not, religion was taken seriously and was a reality that ex-combatants could not evade. In our research amongst a sample of ex-combatants we discovered two groups, those with and those without personal faith. With respect to those with faith, our sample of ex-combatants showed no greater tendency to belief than the general public and those who believed did so for the very same sets of reasons as anyone else. The evidence of personal faith amongst some former combatants means that combatant groups were not monolithic but extremely diverse in terms of their religious outlook. Combatant groups contained with them the array of religious commitment and unbelief of the wider society generally. It was noticeable amongst the non-believers that although they lacked personal faith, religion was still tied up with their cultural and political identity. Combatants emerged from and remained embedded in Northern Irish society, the result of social structural processes of cultural and political identity formation that religion represented. This means that armed struggle was not a poison that somehow infected society from the outside, or represented the actions of a small number of faithless, psychopathic killers; it was embedded in the very same cultural and political processes of identity formation that reproduced religious observance and identiication in others. Religion was relevant to all the ex-combatants in our sample therefore, but in different ways. It is for this reason that we claim that the context enabled and facilitated religious inputs into transitional justice work with ex- combatants, giving the prospect for religion to have a major role in transitional justice. Why did this not happen? While there was no evidence of direct religious motivation to violence amongst our respondents, religion offered little constraint on them either. If religion did not offer a clear and unambiguous motivation to war, religion offered little constraint preventing ex-combatants’ take-up of arms or much effective encouragement to them to desist. In relation to their personal transition to non-violence, religion tended to conirm the commitment to peace that they had already developed as part of political and personal decision-making. Religion was at the heart of the cultures and the national identities of the communities that were perceived to be under threat, which restricted is capacity to prevent ex-combatants taking up arms. The decision to become a combatant for those with personal faith posed special dilemmas of course, giving them a burden of conscience that obligated a narrative that was very personal, even intimate, revealing a high level of relexivity about moral issues. This was particularly so for Loyalist converts to evangelicalism inside the prisons. However, we argue that the prison experience was more important in the transition to non-violence for believers than any consideration of religion alone. Even the conversion experience for Loyalists-turned-evangelicals was inluenced by prison. Religion caused fewer pangs of

85 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly conscience than one might have expected for those ex-combatants with personal faith because their sense of cultural and political identity furnished a moral framework in favour of armed struggle that negated the effects of personal faith in mitigated against it. Religion and the prison experience, however, interacted with each other in contradictory ways. On the one hand, prison entailed experiences conducive to faith. It was brutalis- ing, it interrupted individuals’ lives by separating them from the outside, it gave ample time for relection and debate, and it brought people into contact with religious messages which it was more dificult for them to avoid than when living on the outside. As a close-knit community, prison promoted a religious ‘contagion’ among some prisoners, something clearly evident in the stories of conversion, participation in the communal Rosaries and so on. For those with personal faith, the prison experience enhanced their commitment – an enhancement that enabled religious conversions amongst the formerly non-religious. Conversely, prison involved experiences and inluences which were detrimental to faith. It gave the opportunity for political education which in many cases led Republicans away from religion. The close fellowship between combatants could deepen political resolve, encouraging the encounter with the un-thinking, taken- for-granted religiosity of their upbringing. Separated from the communal and family structures that made observance ‘natural’ for Catholics, some Republican prisoners lost faith. Loyalists never experienced community life in their neighbourhoods as the same constraint pushing them to observance, but such is the importance of community and family structures in the transmission of religion across the generations, that some Loyalist respondents noted the impact of the conversion of their parents, family and friends on their own encounter with God. In one case we see religion as a resource used to make sense of – and change – life on the outside (loss of faith and observance), in the other, religion is impacted by what happens outside and used as a resource to make sense of – and change – life on the inside (by means of religious conversion). It is clear that religion was a key coping strategy to help respondents deal with the harsh- ness and monotony of life inside jail. In this regard, the religious upbringing of many combatants was a signiicant factor regardless of whether or not they now considered themselves religious. A religious morality and sensibility that had lain dormant since their childhood was reawakened through the prison experience to show itself in either a temporary reinvigorated religiosity or religious conversion. Religious conversion was more likely to occur in those inmates with few other coping strategies. This reinforces the importance of political education for Republican prisoners as an alternative coping mechanism, the effects of which was often to cause them to question the ‘natural Catholicity’ of their Irishness, leading to a loss of faith. And the tendency of Loyalist prisoners toward using bodybuilding, gym and steroids, building up the body not the soul, as a coping strategy, ensured that Loyalist religious converts were a minority of the inmate population. This is not to suggest that Loyalist religious converts became religious merely as an alternative to bodybuilding. Religious conversion gave them a

86 Issue 14, January 2016 sense of power, even mastery, over the prison experience in precisely the same way politics did for Republicans. Witnessing and preaching were a form of status and power inside prison and a way of transcending its brutalisation. For these reasons we are right to argue that religion was an enablement for ex-combatants. But the ex-combatants also faced the institutional churches’ opposition to armed struggle. The churches offered a cold climate for ex-combatants. Ex-combatants were free with their criticisms of the institutional church, despite the level of personal faith some displayed and the positive interaction most of them had with individual church- men and women inside the prisons or on the streets. The institutional church rejected them, let them down, and failed to systematically support their political choice, irst to take up and then to give up the armed struggle. In Republican views of the Catholic Church, there were a number of interrelated criticisms. There was the perception that the church was irrelevant to improving the dificult situation the Catholic community found itself in at the start ‘the Troubles’. It was theologically conservative, offering no hope for people to improve their lot, ignored the clear Biblical bias towards the poor and oppressed, and was politically fearful of criticising the British state. Despite the close-knit parish system, Republican ex-combatants felt it was distant from the common people and failed to identify with their experiences as Republicans. While it is clearly the case that the overwhelming majority of Catholics did not follow our respondents into the armed struggle, and the greatest number in the congregation needed help in dealing with the very real effects of the military campaign that our respondents helped to cause, if the Catholic Church was to make a difference to the level of violence, it needed to engage with Sinn Féin as much as the moderate Social Democratic and Labour Party and to dialogue with combatants as much as those in the pews who resisted violence. Brave individuals within the Catholic Church did this, the institutional church did not. The sense of distance from the institutional church was perhaps even greater for Loyalist ex-combatants. Interviewees thought the Protestant churches should have had a greater role in both restraining Loyalist violence and mobilising on behalf of embattled and impoverished Loyalist communities. The mainstream Protestant churches did little to advance the social position of Loyalists in underprivileged neighbourhoods and their middle-class notions of respectability prevented them from developing the kind of close relationships with paramilitaries from which political dialogue, back channel communication and eventually peace grew. Evangelicals stole a march on the mainstream churches in this respect and where Loyalists express positive assessments of the churches, they refer to the prophetic presence of individual evangelicals and social gospel activists who were dialoguing with the paramilitaries and trying to address the poverty and disadvantage in Loyalist neighbourhoods. The mediation of religion in the choice between armed struggle and non-violence therefore is not simple or direct. Catholic ex-combatants largely lost their faith in prison (or

87 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly before) and found a church unable to pastor to their immediate anxieties and concerns when thinking about the morality of armed struggle. Those who retained their faith reported religion to be secondary to what was already a developing political and personal momentum toward non-violence. Religion rationalised a decision already made. For Loyalists, conversion to evangelicalism simultaneously formed and relected their transition to a peace strategy in the working class neighbourhoods where the paramilitaries held sway, regardless of Loyalists’ personal faith. Putting this another way, the growing commitment of evangelical pastors in hard-line areas to a peace strategy helped Loyalist prisoners converted to evangelicalism conirm their decision against armed struggle, a conversion experience that was itself not largely motivated by contempt at a military strategy but by a series of serendipitous factors related to the prison experience. The signiicant prospect there was for religious input into transitional justice interventions with ex-combatants in Northern Ireland as a result of the context of the conlict, was in effect stymied by that very context. It was a context in which the institutional churches were frightened of working closely with the ex-prisoners, in part because of disgust at their choice of armed struggle, as well as fear that doing so would be construed as offering religious support for it, but it was also in part the result of the institutional churches’ own inability to become actively involved in transitional justice. It was left to religious mavericks, independents and individuals to dialogue with ex-combatants and the paramilitary organisations. This limited the nature and extent of the religious inputs because of the lack of oficial authority. Religion was ambivalent. In a setting of ethno-religious conlict like Northern Ireland, religious extremism helped construct antagonistic identities, which it was dificult for more liberal forms of religion to under- cut. Ex-combatants were not all irreligious. Some in our study had personal faith, and some saw in a cultural religious mythology weak justiications for violence, but none experienced their faith or the institutional churches to which they either devoutly or nominally belonged as an encouragement to their choice of violence; nor an encouragement in their transition to non-violence. The irst might be construed the institutional churches’ greatest success in Northern Ireland, the second their greatest weakness.

Conclusion We have tried in this paper to give an overview of a relatively new sub-ield of transitional justice studies, and to structurally locate it as part of wider trends, as well as report on an empirical case that illuminates it. Many themes have been woven together but the argument is simple and clear. The growing interest in religion and transitional justice studies needs to be located in a broader intellectual shift, the emergence of religious peacebuilding, whose formation in the current of post-Cold War triumphalism in the United States has made it a programmatic approach that is hugely optimistic. This contrasts with the earlier approaches in which religion was recognised as part of the environment affecting transitional justice but was largely neutral and minimal. The

88 Issue 14, January 2016 programmatic approach enlightens our understanding of transitional justice by making us aware of the role of religion, but it is atheoretical and in need of conceptual mapping to enable us to see what it is speciically about religion that can impact on transitional justice and in what speciic modes of transitional justice practice. But it is in need of a second corrective. Religious contributions to transitional justice can be exaggerated and are not always positive. The conceptual mapping outlined here draws a distinction between three aspects of the relationship between religion and transitional justice – religious inputs, modes of transitional justice intervention and context – whose interplay means we need to approach the relationship with realism rather than optimism. The case of ex-combatants in Northern Ireland illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of the relationship in a context where we might have expected it to lourish. Models are only as good as the empirical insights they illuminate. We suggest that the model outlined here proffers a conceptual map by which we can better plot the ambivalent contribution religion makes to transitional justice, meaning that optimistic programmatic accounts of this relationship need to be tempered with healthy doses of realism. This contribution, however, should not be ignored or denied despite its challenge to traditional human rights approaches to transitional justice. What we have here called the programmatic realist approach offers in our view the best balance when delineating religious contributions to transitional justice.

References 1. Abu-Nimer, M. (2003). Nonviolence and Peacebuilding in Islam. Gainsville: University Press of Florida. 2. Abu-Nimer, M., & Augsburger, D. (2009). Peace-Building By, Between, and Beyond Mus- lims and Evangelical Christians. Lanham MD: Rowman and Littleield. 3. Amstutz, M. (2004). The Healing of Nations. Lanham MD: Rowman and Littleield. 4. Anderson, J. (2003). Religious Liberty in Transitional Societies: The Politics of Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 5. Appleby, S. (1998). Religion and Global Affairs: Religious Militants for Peace. SAIS Inter- national Review, 18, 38-44. 6. Appleby, S. (2000). The Ambivalence of the Sacred. Lanham MD: Rowman and Littleield. 7. Boesenecker, A., & Vinjanmuri, L. (2011). Lost in Translation? Civil Society, Faith Based Organisations and the Negotiation of International Norms. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 5, 345-365. 8. Brewer, J. (2010). Peace Processes: A Sociological Approach. Cambridge: Polity Press. 9. Brewer, J., Higgins, G., & Teeney, F. (2010). Religious Peacemaking: A Conceptualisation. Sociology, 44, 1019-37. 10. Brewer, J., Higgins, G., & Teeney, F. (2011). Religion, Civil Society and Peace in Northern Ireland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 11. Brudholm, T. (2008). Resentment’s Virtue. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

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12. Brudholm, T., & Cushman, T. (2009). The Religious in Responses to Mass Atrocity. Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press. 13. Cejka, M., & Bamat, T. (2003). Artisans of Peace. Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books. 14. Coward, H., & Smith, G. (2004). Religion and Peacebuilding. New York: SUNY Press. 15. Durward, R., & Marsden, L. (2009). Religion, Conϔlict and Military Intervention. Farn- ham: Ashgate. 16. Gopin, M. (2000). Between Eden and Armageddon: The Future of World Religions, Vio- lence and Peacemaking. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 17. Gopin, M. (2002). Holy War, Holy Peace: How Religion Can Bring Peace to the Middle East. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 18. Gopin, M. (2012). Bridges Across and Impossible Divide. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 19. Hadley, M. (2001). The Spiritual Roots of Restorative Justice. Albany NY: SUNY Press. 20. Hayes, M.A., & Tombs, D. (2001). Truth and Memory: The Church and Human Rights in El Salvador and Guatemala. Leominster: Gracewing. 21. Igreja, V. (2012). Multiple Temporalities in Indigenous Justice and Healing Practices in Mozambique. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 6, 404-422. 22. Jackson, P. (2009). Negotiating with Ghosts: Religion, Conlict and Peace in Northern Uganda. Round Table, 402, 319-332. 23. Johnson, D. (2003). Faith-Based Diplomacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 24. Little, D. (2007). Peacemakers in Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 25. Lundy, P. (2011). Paradoxes and Challenges of Transitional Justice at the “Local” Level: Historical Enquiries in Northern Ireland. Contemporary Social Science, 6, 89-106. 26. Millar, G. (2010). Local Evaluations of Truth Telling in Sierra Leone: Getting at “Why” Though a Qualitative Case Study Analysis. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 4, 477-496. 27. Millar, G. (2011a). Local Evaluations of Justice through Truth Telling in Sierra Leone: Postwar Needs and Transitional Justice. Human Rights Review, 12, 515-535. 28. Millar, G. (2011b). Between Western Theory and Local Practice: Cultural Impediments to Truth-Telling in Sierra Leone. Conϔlict Resolution Quarterly, 29, 177-199. 29. Philpott, D. (2006). The Politics of Past Evil. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 30. Philpott, D. (2007a). What Religion Brings to Restorative Justice. Journal of Interna- tional Affairs, 61, 93-110. 31. Philpott, D. (2007b). Explaining the Political Ambivalence of Religion. American Politi- cal Science Review 103, 516-528. 32. Phiklpott, D. (2009). When Faith Meets History: The Inluence of Religion in Transi- tional Justice. In T. Brudholm & T. Cushman (Eds.), The Religious in Responses to Mass Atrocity (pp. 174-212). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 33. Philpott, D. (2012). Just and Unjust Peace. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 34. Rios, S. (2015). Religion, Social Memory and Conϔlict. London: Palgrave. 35. Robins, S. (2012). Transitional Justice as an Elite Discourse: Human Rights Practice Between the State and the Local in Post-Conlict Nepal. Critical Asian Studies, 44, 3-30.

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36. Rubin, B.R. (2003). Transitional Justice and Human Rights in Afghanistan. International Affairs, 567-581. 37. Satha-Anand, C. (2002). Forgiveness in South East Asia. Global Change, Peace and Secu- rity, 22, 235-247. 38. Schlack, A. (2009). The Role of Religion in Peacebuilding and Conϔlict Resolution. Saar- brucken: VDM. 39. Shirlow, P., Tonge, J., McAuley, J., & McGlynn, C. (2010). Abandoning Historical Conϔlict? Former Political Prisoners and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland. Manchester: Man- chester University Press. 40. Shore, M. (2009). Religion and Conϔlict Resolution. Farnham: Ashgate. 41. Shriver, D. (2009). An Ethic for Enemies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 42. Smock. D. (2001). Faith Based NGOs and International Peacebuilding. Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press. 43. Smock, D. (2002). Interfaith Dialogue and Peacebuilding. Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press. 44. Smock, D. (2006). Religious Contributions to Peacemaking. Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press. 45. Smock, D. (2008). Religion in World Affairs: Its Role in Conϔlict and Peace. Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press. 46. Torrance, A. (2006). The Theological grounds for Advocating Forgiveness in the Sociopo- litical Realm. Belfast: Centre for Contemporary Christianity. 47. Ure, M. (2008). Introduction. European Journal of Social Theory, 11, 283-298. 48. Volf, M. (1996). Exclusion and Embrace. Nashville: Abdingdon Press. 49. Volf, M. (2006). The End of Memory. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. 50. Vinjamuri, L., & Boesenecker, A. (2009). Religious Actors and Transitional Justice. In T. Banchoff (Ed.), Religious Pluralism, Globalization and World Politics. Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press. 51. Wilson, R. (2001). The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

91 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly

Nigeria: State Capacity and Insurgency in the Niger Delta since the 1990s

Otoabasi AKPAN Ubong Essien UMOH

Abstract. During the post-1990 period, negative peace (the absence of armed violence) appeared to have taken a holiday in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. The insurgency in the Niger Delta has experienced a free fall, mutating and escalating almost uninterrupted. Mainstream analyses of the causes and duration of insurgency in the Niger Delta tend to focus on the deprived actor (frustration and aggression) and rational actor (greed and opportunity) paradigms. Less attention has been paid to the role of state capacity in the onset and duration of insurgency in the Niger Delta. Indeed, the speciϔic relationship between state capacity and the onset and duration of the insurgency, especially in the Niger Delta of Nigeria, is yet to receive brawny scholarly attention. This paper attempts to remedy this shortcoming. Building upon well-established theoretical and empirical literature on state capacity, the paper examines the effect of state capacity on the insurgency in the Niger Delta since the 1990s. The paper argues that the manifestation and duration of insurgency in the Niger Delta of Nigeria is a reϔlection of a feeble state capacity. State capacity signiϔicantly explains the willingness to participate in, and the shelf life of, the insurgency in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. To this end, the cause of and cure for the insurgency in the Niger Delta rests on a robust state capacity Otoabasi AKPAN which the Nigerian state lacks. Department of History & Keywords: State Capacity, Insurgency, Niger International Studies, Akwa Ibom Delta, Rebellion. State University, Nigeria E-mail: [email protected] Ubong Essien UMOH Introduction Department of History & International Studies, University of Mainstream approaches to insurgency in Uyo, Nigeria the Niger Delta tend to nest upon issues of E-mail: [email protected] environmental degradation and pollution (Onosode, 2003; Jike, 2004; Aaron, 2006; Conlict Studies Quarterly Akpan, 2008; Douglas, 2009), injustice Issue 14, Ianuary 2016, pp. 92-110 (Tamuno, 2011; Emeseh, 2011), inequal- ity (Tamuno, 2011), underdevelopment

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(Agbonifo, 2009; Tamuno, 2011; Ledum, 2011; Akpan, 2011), deprivation and exploitation (Omofonmwan & Odia, 2009; Obi, 2010b; Obi, 2009c), oil extraction and dispossession (Obi, 2010a; Ukiwo, 2011; Bassey, 2012), poverty (Oyefusi, 2008), unemployment (Oyefusi, 2008; Oyefusi, 2010), greed (Ikelegbe, 2005, Tangban and Umoh, 2014), opportunity (Oyefusi, 2010), corruption (Tangban & Umoh, 2014), poor schooling (Oyefusi, 2010), arms proliferation (Human Rights Watch, 2005; Ibeanu & Luckam, 2006; Ojudu, 2007; Duquet, 2011; Edeko, 2011), bulging youth population (Ukeje, 2001; Oyefusi, 2008), state repression (Owugah, 2009; Inuwa, 2010), injustice (Asain, 2009; Owugah, 2009), deicit corporate social responsibility of oil companies (Owugah, 2001; Frynas, 2003; Idemudia, 2011), resource control (Anugwom, 2005; Obi, 2007; Obi, 2009; Ako, 2011; Sufyan, 2012), resource curse (Watts, 2004; Alao, 2007; Obi, 2010a, 2010b), regime type (Inuwa, 2010). These issues seamlessly weave into the Deprived Actor (DA) and Rational Actor (RA) debate. The deprived actor (DA) line of thinking highlights grievances as an important cause of insurgency while the rational actor (RA) school, on the other hand, downplays the role of grievances and instead emphasises both resource mobilisation and opportunity structure as credible factors motivating insurgents’ activities (Jakobsen, 2011). Both approaches have been used to explain the cause and duration of insurgency in the Niger Delta, leaving the salient impact of state capacity in relative neglect. Moreover, although, few studies examine the relationship between state capacity and political violence in the general literature (De Juan and Pierskalla, 2015; Fjelde and de Soysa, 2009), the concept has not found tenants as it borders on the Niger Delta insurgency. Consequently, state capacity becomes an undisclosed variable in the factorial mix and calculation of the onset and duration of insurgency in the Niger Delta. It is safe to infer that the place and signiicance of state capacity in the onset and duration of insurgency in the Niger Delta denied the academic attention it deserves. This paper seeks to remedy this deiciency in the historiography of the Niger Delta insurgency since the 1990s. Focus is given to the dimension of state capacity that concerns security. Security refers to the ability of the state to uphold its monopoly over the legitimate use of force. This revolves around the state’s stability, control, protection from predation, and the ability to adapt and respond to unexpected crises.

The Concept of State Capacity in International Security Studies Tilly (1990, 2003) opined that state capacity evolved historically over centuries in response to the exigencies of war. In the ield of international security studies, which circumscribes defence, war and conlict (Buzan & Hansen, 2009), state capacity is viewed as a multidimensional concept (Sobek, 2010; De Juan & Pierskalla, 2015) that has a prominent place in the literature on the causes of armed conlict (Arbetman &7 Kugler, 1998; Fearon & Laitin, 2003; Buhaug, 2006), the intensity of armed conlict

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(Benson &7 Kugler, 1998), its duration (DeRouen & Sobek, 2004), the proliferation of armed social actors (Hendrix, 2010; Braithwaite, 2010, Akpan, 2010) and human rights abuse (Englehart, 2009). Fearon and Laitin (2003) provide a convenient start up point for the discourse on state capacity and insurgency. They made a bold attempt to relate the concept of state capacity to insurgency on the premise that the risk of rebellion appears to increase as state capacity declines. In their argument, the risk of insurgency increases as state capacity declines and the supply of rebels increases if the state is “weak” and cannot effectively police its territory (Fearon & Laitin, 2003). This was given verve by Sobek (2010, p. 267) who posited that state capacity plays a critical role in the onset and conduct of civil violence as strong states can simply deter resistance through their ability to physically coerce dissenters. To Sobek (2010), a strong state can limit the escalation of dissent, win wars or credibly commit to negotiated solutions. McBride, Milante and Skaperdas (2011, p. 457) build upon that to argue that weak governance is more likely to lead to conlict, be it in the form of an organised rebellion of social protest. In the literature on international security studies, there are many subject matters that are linked with the concept of state capacity. These include natural resources (Chudhry, 1997; Karl, 1997; Herbst, 2000; Klare, 2001; Synder, 2002; Fearon & Laitin 2003; Ross 2004; Smith 2004; de Soysa & Neumayer, 2007; Lujala, Rod & Thieme 2007), conlict (Hendrix, 2010; Braithwaite, 2010; De Juan & Pierskalla, 2015), revolution (Goodwin & Skocpol, 1989; Lichbach, 1995), war (Tilly, 1990; Humphreys, 2005; Fearon, 2005; Fjelde & de Soysa, 2009; McBride, Milante & Skaperdas, 2011), peace (De Rouen, Ferguson, Norton, Park, Lea & Streat-Bartlett, 2010; McBride, Milante & Skaperdas, 2011), military capacity, bureaucratic/administrative capacity (Hutchison and Johnson, 2011) and the quality and coherence of political institutions (Akpan, 2010; Hutchison & Johnson, 2011). Skocpol (1985) identiies ive variables central to deining whether or not a state has adequate capacity: sovereign integrity; inancial resources; loyal and skilled oficials; stable administrative-military control; and authority and institutional mechanisms to utilize resources. Recent efforts have been attempted to substantiate Skocpol’s ive variables. As argued out by Braithwaite (2010), they include fair public goods provision (Bueno de Mesquita, Smith, Silverson, and Morrow, 2003), the ability to increase cost associated with challenging the regime (Gates et al., 2006), government revenue and spending (Lektzian & Prins, 2008), government observance of contracts and investor-perceived expropriation risk (Fearon, 2005), institutional and economic capacity (Buhaugh, 2006), fostered economic development (Engelbert, 2000) and the ability to penetrate society, regulate social relationships and appropriate resources (Midgal, 1988). Versi (2007) as well as Rice and Patrick (2008), list four sets of critical government responsibilities which deine state capacity. These are: fostering an enabling environment for sustain-

94 Issue 14, January 2016 able and equitable economic growth; establishing and sustaining legitimate, transparent and accountable political institutions; protection of citizens from violent conlicts and securing the country’s territorial integrity; and meeting the basic human needs of the population (Versi, 2007; Rice & Patrick, 2008). Gleaned from the above, it is safe to infer that state capacity appears dificult to deine (Hendrix, 2010, p. 273) given is multidimensional and comprehensive nature. Hanne Fjelde (2010) opines that “there remains disagreement about what state capacity actually is and how to measure it.” Conceptualising, measuring and analysing state capacity appears rather knotty. A way out of the conceptual quagmire was provided by Hendrix (2010) who argues that: Decisions about how to best operationalize the concept of state capacity are, to a certain extent, driven by the topic that researchers are addressing, in addition to competing notions about what constitutes a strong state (p. 275). For the purpose of this paper, state capacity will capture the variables of state stability, effective military control within its borders, exclusive monopoly to extract resources, and the ability to adapt and respond to unexpected crises. In these four variables, the capacity of the Nigerian state appears weak and vulnerable. To this end, two deinitions of state capacity appear useful to assist us engage our analysis. First is Hendrix’s (2010, p. 247) deinition of state capacity as “the state’s ability to deter or repel challenges to its authority with force.” This deinition is in line with the Weberian idea of a state as “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a given territory” (Weber, 1958, p. 77). The second is Braithwaite’s (2010, p. 313) deinition of state capacity as “the endogenous resources that a state possesses that can be mobilised to deal with emergencies”. In line with this, Sobek (2010) argues that despite the various ways in which state capacity can be measured, strong states have a decreased risk of experiencing insurgencies. However, he fondles with a reverse causality where insurgencies decreases state capacity. As state capacity increases, insurgents will locate geographically farther away from a government’s centre of power in order to ind adequate shelter from detection and incarceration by regime authorities (Markowitz & Fariss, 2013). Strong power projec- tion ability allows states to employ maritime security over long distances, and thus increases its ability to coerce, deter, attack or defend (Blechman & Kaplan, 1978). States that are not capable of fulilling their maritime security mandate may provide opportunities for maritime-related crimes such as piracy, smuggling, and hijacking, among others (Murphy, 2009). States with weak capacity are thus described as weak, failing, collapsing. Failed or collapsed states are in one way or another held to account for civil war, domestic and international terrorism, ethnic cleansing, piracy, refugee lows, illicit economies, corruption, and a general failure of development, among other ills.

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Jackson (2007) identiies three distinct dimensions of state capacity: infrastructural capacity in terms of the ability of state institutions to perform essential tasks and enact policy; coercive capacity in terms of the state’s ability and willingness to employ force against challenges to its authority; and national identity and social cohesion in terms of the degree to which the population identiies with the nation-state and accept its legitimate role in their lives. Succinctly captured, Jackson (2007) pontiicated thus: The inability of the state to provide peace and order creates a contentious environment where each component of society – including the ruling elite or regime – competes to preserve and protect its own well-being. This creates a domestic situation similar to the neo-realist conception of structural anarchy where groups create insecurity in the rest of the system when they try to improve their ownse- curity... This condition of insecurity is self-perpetuating because every effort by the regime to secure its own security through force provokes greater resistance and further undermines the institutional basis of the state and the security of the society as a whole (p. 152). Fjelde and de Soysa (2009) situate governmental capacity along Kenneth Boulding’s three conceptual; faces of state power viz: a state’s threat capacity, economic capacity, and integrative capacity (Boulding, 1989). In the discourse of state capacity, Fjelde and de Soysa (2009) rechristens Boulding’s division as coercive capacity, capacity to co-opt social compliance and capacity for forging social cooperation. Among these three dimensions: coercion, co-optation, and cooperation, the idea of coercion it into the requirement of the present study. Coercion is a corresponding notion of state strength, which emphasises the citizenry’s subordination to coercive force. It projects an argument which sustains the position that state institutions back by strong police and military capabilities, with administrative reach into rural areas, are essential elements of a government’s ability to project its force across the territory and impose order within its jurisdiction (Herbst, 2000). Collier and Hoefler (1998) are of the opinion that militarily capable states reduce the opportunity for challengers to form an armed insurgency against the state. This is complemented by Fearon and Laitin (2003) argument that the state’s military, policing, and administrative powers inluence the government’s ability to monitor, deter, and suppress dissent before it materialises into eficient rebel organisations that confront the state with armed force. The central argument is that an organisational weak government invites sub-national actors to use force to further their agendas and challenge state authority through violence (Fjelde & de Soysa, 2009, p. 8). In all, state capacity is different from government capacity. To this end, when examining the issue of state capacity in the Niger Delta, it is important to distinguish between the government and the state. Making a case for the distinction, McBride, Milante and

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Skaperdas (2011) submit: A government at a particular point in time is in charge of the state but the former is a short-lived collection of individuals whereas the latter, in its ideal type at least, is a long-lived entity consisting of many bureaucratic agencies and departments that have a measure of independence from the particular government that is in charge (pp. 447-448). State capacity has a relationship with political violence (Tilly, 2003; De Juan & Pierskalla, 2015). Fjelde and de Soysa (2009) as well as Schwarz (2005) argue that states that are not able to provide effective public goods delivery may foment grievances that increase the risk of violence. Tilly (2003, p. 41) deines governmental capacity as the extent to which governmental agents control state activities and resources within the government’s territory. Arguably, higher levels of state capacity should deter the onset of the insurgency, while the onset of insurgency should reduce state capacity (Thies, 2010).

Background to Contemporary Insurgency in the Niger Delta of Nigeria Contemporary (post-independence) insurgency in the Niger Delta is often viewed as a collective reaction to the problems made manifest by the activities of the petroleum oil industry on the people and environment of the Niger Delta, where crude oil is domiciled. These problems that precede the onset of insurgency in the Niger Delta are factored to include environmental degradation, neglect, marginalisation of the people, and generally the paradox of poverty in the midst of wealth (Akpan, 2011). However, from the ilter of history, the problems associated with the insurgency in the Niger Delta are much deeper than tensions generated by the oil industry. In terms of age, the problems cut across three periodisations of the Nigerian history and historiography namely: the precolonial, the colonial and the post-independence periods (Akpan, 2011, p. 35). In terms of particulars, the Niger Delta question embodies the impact of three major economic endeavours in Nigeria namely: the slave trade economy (illegitimate trade) the staple trade (the so-called legitimate trade) and the petroleum economy. Arguably, the interaction between the Niger Delta peoples and external actors across the Atlantic since the slave trade period up to and even beyond the staple trade era, set the background to the insurgency in the Niger Delta. Since the 15th century, the Atlantic slave commerce brought about three societies in the Niger Delta: the slave trading society, the slave raiding society, the slave raided society (Aigbo, 2006; Ajayi & Uya, 2010). Given that one of the ways of acquiring slaves was through war (Aigbo, 2006; Ajayi & Uya, 2010), a number of wars, especially between the Aros and their neighbours ensued (Aigbo, 2006). This was marked by a regular low of small arms and light weapons within the Niger Delta. By the mid 19th century, when the export trade in palm oil supplanted the export trade in slave, the process of transition was marked by unpleasant friction: between and among

97 Conϔlict Studies Quarterly entrepreneurial coastal chiefs, on one hand, and major palm oil producers in the hinter- lands, on the other, as well as that between the coastal chiefs and European supercargoes (Falola & Paddock, 2012). This necessitated a strong British naval squadron in the Bight of Biafra which consequently expanded the scope and context of social and commercial combustion during the period. A rich source of slaves during the Atlantic slave trade, the Bight of Biafra was a major battle zone between the British Preventive Squadron and unrepentant slave dealers between about 1807 and 1860 (Aigbo, 2006, p. xi). Further conlicts were witnessed in the Bight of Bonny in the face of British attempt to extend her inluence and suzerainty into the Royal Niger Company (United Africa Company) operating in the Oil Rivers (Niger Coast) protectorate. This attempt met with stiff resistance from local potentates like King Jaja of Opobo (1887), King Nana of Olomu of Itsekiri (1892), King Ibanichuka of Okrika (1896), Oba Ovanrenwem of Benin (1897), and King Koko of Brass. As company rule slowly gave way to direct rule, armed challenges to British imperial authority in the form of armed conlicts included but were not limited to the Akassa War of 1895 and the Ekumeku Wars between 1898 and 1911. The discovery of oil in commercial quantities irst at Oloibiri in 1956, and in other communities of the Niger Delta after independence, introduced a new dimension of the problems in the Niger Delta – that of environmental degradation and resource control. When peaceful protest and civil action by various groups in the Niger Delta failed to provide an expedient solution to these perceived problems; insurgency was employed to attract government attention. Since the 1990s, albeit arguably, the link between violence and resources appeared to be a distinctive feature of the security environment of the Niger Delta. This made a signiicant addition to Michael Klare’s thesis on “resource war” where the imbalance in the allocation of oil rents coincides with ethnic or political divisions and creates a natural recipe for internal conlicts (Klare 2001; Philippe Le Billon 2001, 2007). To this end, the insurgency was a war against the Nigerian state and its multinational partners. As much as can be adduced, it represented a stern challenge to the Nigerian military, especially the Navy which had the constitutional role to police Nigeria’s lit- toral boundary and gateway. Going by the idea of state capacity which suggests that a state that has a strong military apparatus at its disposal is rarely challenged, it is safe to argue that the relative weakness of the Nigerian military provided a necessary and suficient explanation for the onset and duration of insurgency in the Niger Delta in the period under review.

How Does State Capacity Explain the Onset of Insurgency in the Niger Delta? This study adopts Hendrix (2010) idea of state capacity which emphasizes the state’s ability to deter or repel challenges to its authority with force. The unchallenged control of the state territory and the monopoly of the legitimate use of force within the

98 Issue 14, January 2016 borders of the state encapsulate the Weberian deining properties of a sovereign state (Rothschild & Harbeson, 2000). In the post-independence Nigerian state, these deining properties have been routinely desecrated by enduring insurgency in the Niger Delta. The earliest form of insurgency post-colonial Nigeria’s Niger Delta found expression in the Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro-led twelve days secessionist insurgency in 1966, which failed to establish a “Niger Delta Republic”. Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro formed the Niger Delta Volunteer Service (NDVS) and set up a base in Taylor Creek – an area where the Nigerian state capacity in terms of governance was completely absent. From there, Boro took over Kaiama, Yenagoa, Imbiama, Oloibiri, Nembe, Patani, Odi and Sagbama communities in the Niger Delta. Although the insurgency was defective in terms of duration, it exposed the frail nature of state capacity in the Niger Delta. From the 1990s, renewed local agitation against underdevelopment and environmental degradation brought about by the activities of various multinational oil companies exploring and mining oil in the Niger Delta witnessed the mushrooming of insurgents (organised armed groups known in popular media parlance as “militants”) attacking oil installations and personnel of various multinational oil companies operating in the Niger Delta, thereby, disturbing the equilibrium of peace (Osakwe & Umoh, 2012). Most violent conlicts pitched rival local communities in the Niger Delta against each other and often centred on how to distribute the compensation that was been paid by either the government or the multinational oil companies (Small Arms Survey, 2004, 2007). Some inter-communal wars included, but not limited to, Okpoama vs Ewoama (1997); Liama vs Beletiama (1998); Oleh vs Olomoro (2000). Some inter-ethnic wars between 1997 and 2003 included, but not limited to, Ijaw vs Itsekiri (Delta State); Urhobo vs Itsekiri (Delta State); Ogoni vs Okrika (Rivers State); Ogoni vs Andoni (Rivers State); Ilaje vs Ijaw (Ondo State). By 2003, the Niger Delta was a complex operating environment, characterized by random armed conlicts within and between oil possessing communities (often related to access to the beneits of oil operations); between oil possessing communities and oil companies; and between various insurgent groups and the Nigerian security forces deployed to protect the vast oil infrastructure in the Niger Delta. Although most of these wars and crises were unexpected, it exposed the inability of the Nigerian state to adapt and respond to unexpected crises. Arguably, the rather frequent wars exposed the feeble capacity of the Nigerian state to manage the complex political economy of the Niger Delta that relied hugely on oil rents, compensation, patronage and blackmail. The budding of insurgent groups, and consequently, the renewed onset of the insurgency after 1999 testiies, albeit arguably, to an ebbing capacity of the Nigerian state to provide security in the Niger Delta. These groups include ut are not limited to the Movement for the Survival of Izon Nationality in the Niger Delta (MOSIEND), Niger Delta Freedom Fighter (NDFF), the Federated Niger Delta Izon Communities (FNDIC), the

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Membutu Boys, the Niger Delta Vigilante (NDV), the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF), the Niger Delta Militant Force Squad (NDMFS), Niger Delta Coastal Guerillas (NDCG), South-South Liberation Movement (SSLM), Movement for the Sovereign State of the Niger Delta (MSSND), the Niger Delta Strike Force (NDSF), the November 1895 Movement, ELIMOTU, the Arogbo Freedom Fighters, Iduwini Volunteer Force (IVF), the Niger Delta People‘s Salvation Front (NDPSF), the Coalition for Militant Action (COMA), the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), the Martyrs Brigade. Added to these, were some armed gangs, criminals and cult groups that took advantage of the weak capacity of the Nigerian state to perpetuate crimes of oil bunkering, vandalization of oil infrastructures and kidnapping in the Niger Delta. Some gangs and cult groups include Akaso Marine, Asawana, Black Axe, Black Braziers, Buccaneers, Columbians, Cyprus Marine, D12, Deadly Underdogs, Dey Gbam, Deywell, Elegem Face, Germans, Greenlanders, Icelanders, Italians 2001, KKK, Maia Lords, Okomera, Outlaws, Vikings, Vultures, Wayingi Marine, among others. How did such a telephone directory list of social actors bud and bulge with signiicant numbers of disciples in the Niger Delta without the Government of Nigeria intercepting their formation? The state capacity provides an explanation. The proliferation of private technicians of violence in the Niger Delta exposed the feeble capacity of the Nigerian state to effectively protect the vast oil infrastructure in the Niger Delta buried in the intestine of creeks and provide adequate security for the local population. As argued by Fearon and Laitin (2003), the supply of insurgents increases if the state is “weak” and cannot effectively police its territory. Consequently, the risk of insurgency appears to increase as state capacity declines. State capacity is determined by the state’s ability to deter or repel challenges to its authority with force. Bringing such determinant to bear, the capacity of the Nigerian state appeared comatose in the face of mutating insurgent groups in the Niger Delta. Moreover, all insurgent groups, as well as cult and criminal groups, possessed intimidat- ing quantities of small arms and light weapons (SALWs). Such weapons were an integral part of the daily commercial transactions that took place within the creeks of the Niger Delta. With SALWs in the regular possession of social actors and technicians of violence in the Niger Delta, it became quite easily to challenge the monopoly of violence of the Nigerian state, and indeed, assault its overall capacity to effectively provide security and order in a Weberian style. The plausible argument sustained by the state capacity tenants is that when a state’s status as the monopoly of violence begins to slip, social actors of all types see a need to provide for their own security. The ebbing capacities of the state provide the essential condition for violence to emerge. Country-level analyses on the link between military power and violent conlict onset have been inconclusive. Subnational geospatial analyses have argued that violence will most likely occur in areas where the state is not present or not able to effectively exert

100 Issue 14, January 2016 authority (De Juan & Pierskalla, 2015, p. 177). Such areas are often tagged “ungoverned territories” – an area in which a state faces signiicant challenges establishing control (Rabasa, 2007; Clunan & Trinkunas, 2010). Proponents of the state capacity concept further argue that weak states simply do not possess suficient police, military, and intelligence forces to monitor extensive geographical areas, which are largely ungoverned. Consequently, insurgents organise and operate in such spaces left relatively ungoverned. The creeks in the Niger Delta were peculiar examples of such ungoverned spaces were insurgents organised and operated. Seeing such ungoverned spaces as peculiar domains of insurgent bases, it is safe to argue that the insurgents were masters of that domain in terms of their knowledge of the creeks. Insurgents in the Niger Delta gainfully took advantage of the relatively ungoverned spaces in the creeks to have freedom of action and secure bases of operation where they were safe from interdiction. The creeks were one of such ungoverned spaces in the Niger Delta. The Nigerian state lacked the needed and necessary police, military and intelligence manpower to effectively monitor the extensive and complex environment of the Niger Delta. Consequently, insurgents rivalled the state in their exclusive right to the monopoly of violence. This satisies the argument of state capacity pundits that most fundamental feature of weak states is their near inability to establish and maintain a monopoly of the instrument of violence as weak states tend to share this important mark of nationhood and sovereignty with other social actors. The insurgents in the Niger Delta represented such social actors. However, while the formation of insurgent groups in the Niger Delta was one thing, the ability of insurgent groups to challenge the Nigerian state for a signiicant duration was another. Can the state capacity still explain the duration as much as it has explained the onset?

How Does State Capacity Explain the Duration of Insurgency in the Niger Delta? In Lichbach’s (1995, p. 68) view, weak states “invite collective dissent and revolution,” whereas strong states “decrease the rebel’s expectation of victory” (Sobek, 2010, p. 269). To this end, any rational insurgent would avoid conlicts with strong states, all else being equal, as compared to weak states (Sobek, 2010). To this end, a state can either be weak or strong lending support to Migdal’s (1998) deinition of state capacity as state strength. In Buzan’s (1983) view, weak states either do not have, or have failed to create, a domestic political and social consensus of suficient strength to eliminate large-scale use of force as a major and continuing element in the domestic political life of the nation. While the onset of insurgency in the Niger Delta is attributable to the general weak capacity of the Nigerian state to manage its resource politics of the Niger Delta, the duration of the insurgency can be explained in terms of a relatively unprofessional military that took up a policing job in the Niger Delta. Between 1966 and 1970, the Nigerian military was able to interrupt separatist insurgency in the Niger Delta – irst against

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Isaac Boro in 1966 and the second against Odumegwu Ojukwu’s Biafra between 1967 and 1967. While the capacity of the Nigerian state was weak enough to allow the onset of such insurgency, its resilience was applauded given the relatively short duration it took the military to interrupt both insurgencies. However, the post-1990 period appeared quite different as it took the Nigerian military more than two decades to bring about relative order in the Niger Delta. became an exception to in an attempt to interrupt mutating insurgency in the Niger Delta, the Government of Nigeria (GoN) organised service wings of the Nigerian military – Army, Navy and Air Force – into a formidable counterinsurgency (COIN) unit known in popular parlance as the Joint Task Force. Arguably, Decree No 23 of 1992 appeared to have established the irst military COIN outit in the Niger Delta – Rivers State Internal Security Task Force (RSISTF) (Inuwa, 2010; Umoh, 2015). This appeared to have been in response to the budding insurgency by MOSOP in Ogoniland and the capacity problem of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) to effectively neutralise the crisis. Both the Nigerian Army (NN) and the Nigerian Navy (NA) were involved in the RSISTF operations. RSISTF was deployed to neutralise the Ogoni crisis that was increasingly assuming the form of an insurgency after the four Ogoni chiefs were murdered. By 1999, insurgent groups blossomed in the Niger Delta with more violent capacity to challenge the Nigerian state and its multinational oil partners. The reality agrees with Gurr and Bishop’s (1970, p. 235) position that “if dissident coercive control is substantially less than the regime coercive control in both scope and degree, dissidents are not likely to be able to organise and sustain an internal war.” Gleaned from this, the insurgency is fundamentally about the loss of state monopoly over the use of force (Fjelde & de Soysa, 2009). The duration of the state loss of the monopoly of violence appeared to have been much more of a function of weak state capacity measured in terms of poor counterinsurgency posture of the military. This adds credence to Fjelde and de Soysa’s (2009) position that weak states are poor at counterinsurgency. Given the importance of Nigeria’s vast oil infrastructure in the Niger Delta to the economic survival of Nigeria, it was expected that the duration of the insurgency, especially after 1999, would be quickly interrupted. However, it was not so. To relect the reality that insurgency thrived and survived in a location (the Niger Delta) where Nigeria derived over 80% of its GDP, 95% of its national budget, and 90% of its foreign ex- change earnings, is to cast overwhelming doubt on the capacity of the Nigerian military deployed to police the area. However, under the counterinsurgency umbrella of the Nigerian military in the Niger Delta, the economy of Nigeria still bled, and the lateral cut took place in the creeks where Nigeria’s vast oil infrastructure lay prostrate and vulnerable to attacks. The ability of the insurgents to carry out artisanal extraction of crude oil (oil bunkering) in the Niger Delta over the years, revealed the loss of the exclusive monopoly to extract resources by the Nigerian state.

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The weak posture and poor counterinsurgency outit of the Nigerian Navy reached an embarrassing point in 2008 when MEND insurgents attacked an offshore oil platform operated by Shell-BP. The attack, which took place about 120km offshore, was within the maritime security zone of the Nigerian Navy. The insurgent attack on an offshore oil facility which had the capacity to produce 220,000 barrels per day of oil, equivalent to about 10 percent of Nigeria’s crude oil output (Emma & Jimitota, 2008; Agbo, 2009) revealed that the Nigerian state was not able to employ maritime security over long distances. In 2009, the weak capacity of the Nigerian Navy (NN) was further exposed when MEND insurgents made their way on Nigeria’s international waters to the Lagos coast and blew up the Atlas Cove Jetty – one of Nigeria’s biggest oil storage facilities. These events afirm Murphy’s (2009) argument that states that are not capable of fulilling their maritime security mandate may provide opportunities for maritime-related crimes such as piracy, smuggling, and hijacking, among others. It exposed the lack or loss of effective military control within Nigeria’s maritime borders. Few argue that the Nigerian military faced ambiguous challenges in its counterinsurgency campaign in the Niger Delta (Afahakan, 2015; Umoh, 2015). The terrain made armoured campaigns dificult if not completely impossible. Indeed, the Niger Delta peculiar terrain increased tactical sluggishness on the part of the Nigerian military. Since 2003, the Nigerian military operating in the Niger Delta under the JTF attempted to employ a conventional mindset in an unconventional security environment. It required the immediate transformation from a static garrison to a lexible patrolling force with the novel responsibility of police duties. The need to attain overall military objectives using minimum force questioned the professional capacity of the Nigerian military, and among other things, mirrored weakness. The need to upgrade the COIN capacity of the Nigerian military to conform to the realities of the Niger Delta insurgency was paid for by an extended COIN duration. Furthermore, given that the post-1990 insurgency in the Niger Delta had all the trapping of political and economic fraudulence (Tangban and Umoh, 2014), made possible by the gains from oil deals, the Nigerian military became a frail agency of a feeble government. Chaudhry (1997), Karl (1997), Herbst (2000), Klare (2001), Synder (2002), Fearon and Laitin (2003); Collier and Hoefler (2004); Smith (2004); Humphreys (2005); Fearon (2005); Ross (1999, 2003, 2004, 2006); de Soysa and Neumayer (2007);Aspinall (2007);Lujala, Rod and Thieme (2007); Basedau and Lay (2009);and Akpan (2010), all argue that oil is generally regarded as the resource most directly associated with the weak state capacity and the resource curse phenomenon. As de Soysa and Neumayer (2007, p. 204) noted: “state strength is weaker under conditions of oil extraction ... because of ‘political Dutch disease’ working through negative effects of resource wealth on state institutions”. Thies (2010) takes a leap forward and examines how primary commodities affect the relationship between civil war and state capacity. This reality inds an almost apt expression in the Niger Delta of Nigeria in the post-1990 period.

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Regardless of the ilter one uses, oil is implicated in the Nigerian tragedy for the simple fact that it is the lone source of revenue upon which about 150 million Nigerians depend on (Akpan, 2011). To this end, it becomes pertinent in Ahonsi’s (2011) view, to question the capacity of the Nigerian state to lead and implement an effective response to the insurgency in the Niger Delta. This is because such a response clearly requires a robust and strong capacity to plan, implement and monitor a complex series of interventions over a sustained period, which the Nigerian state has increasingly shown itself to be lacking (Ahonsi, 2011).

Conclusion Relying on the variables of state stability, effective military control within its borders, exclusive monopoly to extract resources, and the ability to adapt and respond to unexpected crises, the capacity of the Nigerian state showed every indication of weakness. Despite the seeming advantages possessed by the Nigerian state: legitimacy to carry out international relations, maintain a military and police force, create institutions, establish bureaucracies, make laws, provide social amenities, as well as determine resource use and distribution; it appeared that capacity was not added to such advantages. On account of its weak state capacity, it became dificult for the Nigerian state to repel insurgents in the Niger Delta with ease. Insurgent groups sprung up in the Niger Delta given the almost ungovernable nature of the area by the Nigerian state – a problem attributable to weak state capacity. Furthermore, as the capacity of the Nigerian state remained weak, the shelf life of the insurgency extended. To this end, state capacity partly, but signiicantly, explains the onset of insurgency in the Niger Delta since the 1990s and its duration up to date.

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